Science and Technology

[Fox News] Is the East Coast on the brink of a major earthquake — and are we prepared?

The earthquake that struck the East Coast earlier this month was felt by an estimated 42 million people and luckily caused little damage, but what are the chances of a bigger, more powerful quake striking the area? And if it does, what could it look like — and are we prepared?

The April 5 phenomenon was a 4.8 magnitude earthquake centered near Whitehouse Station in New Jersey, which is about 40 miles west of New York City.

Shaking was felt from Washington D.C. to Maine, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and it followed a much smaller, 1.7 magnitude earthquake in New York City on Jan. 2. 

Earthquakes are rare along the East Coast, with the most powerful one in the last 100 years hitting in August 2011, clocking 5.8 on the Richter scale. It was centered in Virginia and felt from Washington, D.C. to Boston.

4.8 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE STRIKES NEW JERSEY, SHAKING BUILDINGS IN SURROUNDING STATES

Before that, an earthquake in South Carolina in 1886 is understood to have measured between 6.6 and 7.3 on the Richter scale. There is no definitive measurement of that quake since the Richter scale has only been around since the mid-1930s, but the tectonic shift still killed 60 people.

Professor John Ebel, a seismologist in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Boston College, tells Fox News Digital that when quakes start breaking 5.0 on the Richter scale, damage begins to occur. 

For instance, the devastating earthquake that hit Turkey and Syria last year measured 7.8 and resulted in the death of nearly 62,000 people as tens of thousands of buildings were either destroyed or severely damaged.

California’s Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989, meanwhile, measured 6.9 and caused 69 deaths, and the 1994 Northridge earthquake in the Golden State clocked 6.7, killing 57 people. Thousands more were injured. 

“As you go above magnitude five, the shaking becomes stronger and the area over which the strong shaking is experienced becomes wider,” Ebel says. “So if you get a magnitude six, the shaking is ten times stronger than a magnitude five. So had this month’s earthquake been a 5.8, rather than a 4.8, then we would be looking at damage to unreinforced structures in the greater New York City area.”

“Now I have to qualify this and say that in the past few decades, New York City has had an earthquake provision in its building code while New Jersey, New York and Connecticut have all adopted some version of earthquake provisions in their building codes,” Ebel explained. “So modern buildings that are put up today will actually do quite well, even in strong earthquake shaking… If you have a magnitude 6 or even a magnitude seven.”

In terms of the Tri-state area, Ebel says that the region has had smaller earthquakes, but it’s been spared anything that’s been significantly damaging.

An 1884 quake in Brooklyn did cause limited damage and injuries. Seismologists estimated it would have measured in the region of 5.0 and 5.2, while a quake jolted Massachusetts in 1775 in the region of 6.0 and 6.3.

WHAT TO DO DURING AN EARTHQUAKE AND HOW TO PREPARE

“In 1884 there were things knocked from shelves, some cracks in walls that were reported, particularly plaster walls, which crack very easily if a building is shaken,” Ebel said. “There were some brick walls that had some cracks and people panicked because of the very strong shaking.”

A magnitude five earthquake hits the tri-state area once every 120 years, says Ebel, who penned the book “New England Earthquakes: The Surprising History of Seismic Activity in the Northeast.”

“The question is, can we have something bigger? And in my opinion, yes we can,” he said. “We can’t predict earthquakes, and we don’t know when the next one is going to occur, but we do have a low, not insignificant probability of a damaging earthquake at some point.”

Ebel said that the April 5 earthquake has left seismologists baffled since it didn’t occur on the Ramapo Fault zone, highlighting just how hard it is to predict the phenomenon from occurring. The Ramapo Fault zone is a series of small fault lines that runs through New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Spanning more than 185 miles, it was formed about 200 million years ago.

“Right now it’s a seismological mystery,” Ebel said. “We have some earthquakes in our region where we don’t have faults mapped. But that’s even true in California. Not every earthquake occurs on a known or mapped fault in California, so there are still a lot of seismologists have to learn about the exact relationship between old faults and modern earthquakes.”

Ebel noted that buildings aren’t the only thing to consider when earthquakes strike. In the California quakes, overpasses crumbled while the electrical grid can go down too, causing electrical surges and fires.  

Toxic chemicals were knocked off of the shelves of a chemistry building in 1989 and the building had to be evacuated, Ebel said. 

“And you think about hospitals and some industrial facilities having that situation,” he explained. “So you have these things that are not catastrophic necessarily, but are going to be a real problem.”

And an earthquake doesn’t necessarily have to rattle land in order to cause destruction.

A jolt out at sea could trigger a dangerous tsunami, like the one on the edge of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in Canada in 1929. It was felt as far away as New York City.

Waves as high as 23 feet crashed on the shore, according to the International Tsunami Information Center, with up to 28 people losing their lives. 

“A tsunami is not necessarily a very high probability event, but it’s one that we have to think about also,” Ebel says in relation to the East Coast.

The Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 was triggered by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Ebel says a tsunami similar to 1929 could cause a storm surge along the lines of Hurricane Sandy in 2012, where 43 people died in New York City. 

“The threat of an earthquake is not as great as in California, but it’s something that we have to take into account and have emergency plans for and have building codes for,” Ebel says. “Our state and local emergency management agencies in all the northeastern states do earthquake planning — what we call tabletop exercises — where they pretend an earthquake occurs.”

“So those kinds of preparations are made on a regular basis,” he concludes. “Building codes are constantly being reevaluated and approved, not just for earthquakes, but for fires and chemical spills and all kinds of things. So we’re getting more prepared all the time.”

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Business

[Fox Business] Google CEO stresses ‘this is a business’ after in-office protesters fired

The arrest and subsequent termination of more than two dozen Google employees involved in protests held at the tech giant’s offices last week prompted CEO Sundar Pichai to address the matter with the workers who remained on the payroll.

Google fired 28 workers after anti-Israel protests took over its corporate offices in New York, Seattle and Sunnyvale, California, on April 16 in 10-hour sit-ins where demonstrators “took over office spaces, defaced our property, and physically impeded the work of other Googlers,” according to an internal memo from Chris Rackow, Google vice president of global security.

The next day, Pichai reiterated in a blog post that such behavior would not be tolerated.

GOOGLE FIRES EMPLOYEE WHO INTERRUPTED TECH CONFERENCE WITH ANTI-ISRAEL RANT: ‘NOT OKAY’

“We have a culture of vibrant, open discussion that enables us to create amazing products and turn great ideas into action. That’s important to preserve,” Pichai wrote. “But ultimately we are a workplace and our policies and expectations are clear: this is a business, and not a place to act in a way that disrupts coworkers or makes them feel unsafe, to attempt to use the company as a personal platform, or to fight over disruptive issues or debate politics.”

Demonstrators were arrested after they occupied the office of Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurianto to read their list of demands, including that Google cut off all ties to Israel and cancel a contract to provide cloud-computing and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli government. 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY RESPONDS AFTER ROBERT KRAFT SAYS HE’S PULLING SUPPORT OVER ANTISEMITIC VIOLENCE

The employees also demanded that the company stop “the harassment, intimidation, bullying, silencing, and censorship of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Googlers.”

Tech workers at both Amazon and Google have long protested Project Nimbus, which is Google and Amazon’s $1.2 billion contract with the Israeli government and military.

The tech workers, who organized the group “No Tech for Apartheid,” said the Israeli miliary will use Google technology for “genocidal means.”

Google has denied that its Nimbus project is assisting Israel with weapons or intelligence services, and demonstrators conceded that there was no proof that Project Nimbus was being used against the civilian population in Gaza.

A Google spokesperson told FOX Business in an email Tuesday that following the April 16 incidents, the company continued its investigation, “looking at additional details provided by coworkers who were physically disrupted, as well as those employees who took longer to identify because their identity was partly concealed – like by wearing a mask without their badge – while engaged in the disruption.”

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“Our investigation into these events is now concluded, and we have terminated the employment of additional employees who were found to have been directly involved in disruptive activity,” the spokesperson continued. “To reiterate, every single one of those whose employment was terminated was personally and definitively involved in disruptive activity inside our buildings. We carefully confirmed and reconfirmed this.”

FOX Business’ Chris Pandolfo and Sarah Rumpf-Whitten contributed to this report.

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Business

[Fox Business] Millions have moved out of certain parts of the country now designated “Climate Abandonment Areas”

More frequent flooding is leaving lasting damage, even as neighborhoods rebuild. Certain areas of the country are being deemed “Climate Abandonment Areas.” These areas are losing a large percentage of their population entirely due to climate change, specifically flooding, according to a First Street report.  

Climate Abandonment Areas include 818,000 U.S. Census blocks. Over 3.2 million people have moved away from these areas between 2000 and 2020 due to flooding damage. 

“There appears to be clear winners and losers in regard to the impact of flood risk on neighborhood level population change,” Dr. Jeremy Porter, the head of climate implications research at the First Street Foundation, said. 

“The downstream implications of this are massive and impact property values, neighborhood composition and commercial viability both positively and negatively.”

In the next 30 years, current Climate Abandonment Areas are expected to lose more of their populations. The populations are expected to decline by an additional 16%, equivalent to 2.5 million more people. 

“The population exposure over the next 30 years is a serious concern,” Evelyn Shu, a senior research analyst at the First Street Foundation, said.

“For decades we’ve chosen to build and develop in areas that we believed did not have significant risk, but due to the impacts of climate change, those areas are very rapidly beginning to look like areas we’ve avoided in the past.”

Having enough homeowners insurance is vital to protect you after a natural disaster. To ensure your insurance is suitable for your circumstances, visit Credible to check out plans, providers, and costs.

CLIMATE DISASTERS ARE DRIVING UP THE COST OF INSURANCE AND IMPACTING HOME VALUES: REPORT

Of the 50 U.S. states, California is struggling the most with high homeowners insurance rates. Sky-high homeowners insurance rates are due, in part, to natural disasters like wildfires and mudslides. 

Citing the high risk and the costs associated with those risks, State Farm recently announced it will not continue to insure homes in certain areas. It’s cutting 72,000 home and commercial insurance policies. These cuts impact around 30,000 homeowners and rental insurance policies specifically. 

“We will continue to work constructively with the California Department of Insurance, the Governor’s Office, and policymakers to actively pursue these reforms in order to establish an environment in which insurance rates are better aligned with risk,” the State Farm press release stated. 

Starting July 3, 2024, and continuing through the year, State Farm will begin pulling out of the California homeowners insurance market. 

The same issue is happening in Florida, where Progressive has begun to pull some of its insurance policies. Starting in May 2024, to “rebalance their exposure”, they’ll stop renewing some policies. 

If you want to find a new homeowners insurance provider that offers lower rates, Credible can walk you through each homeowner’s insurance policy, the coverage they offer and show you the rates you may qualify for.

2023 WAS THE HOTTEST YEAR ON RECORD, DRIVING UP UTILITY COSTS AND HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE PRICES

While homeowners insurance rates are definitely on the rise, they’re not rising as much as principal and interest payments on mortgages, a Freddie Mac report found.

The cost of buying a home has skyrocketed over the last few years, largely due to high mortgage rates. That said, homeowners insurance still contributes significantly to the total cost of homeownership. 

In 2018, homeowners insurance premiums averaged $1,081 for Freddie Mac borrowers, but in 2023, they averaged $1,522 annually. That’s a 40.8% increase. 

Freddie Mac found that in 2018, premiums accounted for 1.49% of borrowers’ incomes. This rose by 10% by 2023 when 1.64% of a borrower’s income went towards monthly premiums. 

Certain states pay higher premiums than others. Louisiana, Kansas, Nebraska and Mississippi pay over $8 for every $1,000 in home value. All the while, borrowers from California, Washington, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington, DC all paid less than $2.50 for $1,000, according to the Freddie Mac report. 

Comparing multiple insurance quotes can potentially save you hundreds of dollars per year. Luckily, it’s easy to get a free quote in minutes through Credible’s partners. 

HOMEBUYERS GAINED THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS AS MORTGAGE INTEREST RATES FALL: REDFIN

Have a finance-related question, but don’t know who to ask? Email The Credible Money Expert at [email protected] and your question might be answered by Credible in our Money Expert column.

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