The New Madrid Seismic Zone: whose fault is it anyway?: hearing before the Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local

Original publisher: Washington : U.S. G.P.O. : For sale by the Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O., 2008. LC Number: KF26 .H637 2007a OCLC Number: (OCoLC)244287166 Subject: New Madrid Seismic Zone. Excerpt: ... 11 over the next 50 years for a magnitude 7.0-plus event, but in the area of 25 to 40 percent for another one in the magnitude 6.0 range, sort of similar to that 1895 event that you have there. So again, those projections are about where earthquakes are going to occur and then can be fed into building codes that can make build-ings stronger. RYOR Senator P. And do you know anything about the building codes? Are people following those building codes out there? PPLEGATE Mr. A. Well, that is part of the handoff we have in NEHRP. Senator P. I understand. RYOR PPLEGATE Mr. A. We prepare the maps and we work with FEMA to get those provisions built into model codes and then that is part of their NEHRP activity - is the actual looking at the adoptions. We certainly try to do what we can in conjunction in terms of building public awareness, but that is certainly a challenge. Senator P. All right. Mr. Hayes, during your testimony you RYOR referred to FEMA, NIST, NSF, and USGS. We have a lot of Fed-eral agencies involved here. Could you give us the one-minute de-scription of the role each plays when it comes to earthquake plan-ning and response? Could you give us a very brief summary on that? Mr. H. Well, within NEHRP, sir, there is not a very exten-AYES sive role that NEHRP plays in planning and response. The statute has NEHRP focusing on pre-disaster mitigation efforts. Within the legislation, essentially FEMA is levied with the responsibility for exercising the National Response Plan when an event occurs and work that USGS, our partners at USGS provide, as Mr. Applegate has described for you, provide information that is used in the re-sponse activities following an earthquake. NIST and NSF are re-sponsible for providing research results that can then be worked by FEMA ...