Who is to Blame?

Disasters, nature, and acts of God

Robert White

• Publisher: Monarch Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9780857214744
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

How can an omnipotent God of love allow disasters? Bob White, a leading geophysicist, tackles one of the biggest conundrums in Christian thinking. He combines a profound knowledge of the science behind dramatic natural events with thorough research into their impact, and underpins it with a carefully reasoned theological response. Examining each type in turn, he illuminates the way in which human factors turn natural processes, without which the earth would be sterile and uninhabitable, into disasters: how population growth, widespread inequality, foolish farming and building practices, and climate change all contribute, exacerbating heat waves, famines, and droughts.

II

Natural Disasters

In Part I, I outlined the problems that natural disasters pose both to people of faith, and to those with no religious affiliations. We also saw that this world is a fruitful place largely because of natural processes like volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and floods. But it is clear that the rapid increase of global population cannot continue indefinitely if humanity is to live sustainably into the future on a planet of finite size with finite resources.

The population increase also underlies much of the increased casualty toll of natural disasters in the last century. Population densities in most parts of the world are higher now than ever before in the history of humankind, and people increasingly live concentrated in cities. This makes them far more vulnerable to disasters such as a large earthquake or a flood that hits that city.

In this section, we examine in turn the main disasters that affect humanity and show that almost always the disaster is exacerbated by the actions, or sometimes by the inaction of humans. We conclude that often the blame for more than 95 per cent of the casualties can be laid at the door of humans, because they were avoidable even with current expertise.

Finally, we survey the surprisingly large numbers of natural disasters portrayed, or often just mentioned incidentally in the Bible narratives.

4

Earthquakes

Earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do.

Attributed to Nicholas Ambraseys³¹

First the earthquake, then the disaster.

Graffiti written after the 1994 magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Northridge, California

“It’s snowing still,” said Eeyore gloomily. “So it is.” “And freezing.” “Is it?” “Yes,” said Eeyore. “However,” he said, brightening up a little, “we haven’t had an earthquake lately.”

A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner

The exact location and timing of earthquakes cannot be predicted. However, there is now a good understanding of many of the areas of the world with the greatest earthquake hazards, especially where they lie on the boundaries between the earth’s tectonic plates. So although we can neither prevent earthquakes happening, nor predict exactly when or where they will next occur, we can take steps to mitigate their effects in areas known to be hazardous. The shaking caused by earthquakes is generally well understood, and buildings can be constructed to withstand it without catastrophic failure.

One of the little-remarked triumphs of earthquake engineering is that the seismic shaking from the massive magnitude 9.1 earthquake near Japan in March 2011 caused few deaths directly – this despite the fact that the earthquake was 30 times more energetic than the maximum size expected before it happened. This can be attributed almost entirely to the building codes in place in Japan. In addition, automated systems from over 1,000 seismometers also enabled over a minute’s warning to be given in Tokyo of the impending arrival of seismic waves. That this can be done at all is a triumph of science and technology. It relies on the fact that electronic signals can be transmitted at the speed of light, whereas the most damaging seismic waves travel much more slowly at 3–4 kilometres per second (though at 11,000–14,000 kilometres per hour, that is still blisteringly fast by most standards). This undoubtedly saved enormous numbers of lives among the 6 million people in areas exposed to severe shaking. They also triggered automatic emergency braking before the seismic waves arrived on over 30 high-speed bullet trains travelling across the Sendai Plain at up to 300 kilometres per hour. This prevented derailment and almost certain large loss of life.

Advance warnings were also given of the tsunami wave which first struck the east coast of Japan 15 minutes after the 2011 earthquake, and which caused most of the fatalities. Of the 19,000 who died as a result of the earthquake, 95 per cent were due to drowning in the tsunami and only 1.2 per cent from the direct earthquake shaking. The tsunami was devastating, reaching 40 metres high in places, far above the expected maximum. Nevertheless, the death toll represented a much smaller percentage of the population than the 230,000 killed by the tsunami that followed the 2004 Sumatran earthquake, despite the height of the Sumatran tsunami being much smaller, reaching only 10 metres maximum. The difference in fatalities can be attributed to the far higher levels of awareness and preparedness for tsunamis in Japan, where every town displays escape routes and broadcasts tsunami alerts through television, radio, and loudspeakers in the streets. Ironically, a large number of deaths in the Japanese tsunami were due to people being so confident in the tsunami protection walls that over 40 per cent of the people in coastal areas did not evacuate promptly when they still had the opportunity to do so.

The resilience to the 2011 Japanese earthquake was in marked contrast to the death toll caused by the earlier Great Kanto earthquake of Japan in September 1923. That had a smaller magnitude of 8.3, but caused the deaths of about 150,000 people at a time when the population was much lower than today. However, in an almost exact repeat of the great fire that destroyed much of San Francisco after the better-known earthquake in 1906 (discussed below), most of the damage in Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923 was done not by the earthquake but by a conflagration that followed it. Most buildings were wooden, and over 2 million people in Tokyo lived in traditional Japanese houses with interior walls of oiled paper panels. The earthquake happened at lunchtime, and open coal or charcoal household fires being used for cooking were toppled by the shaking and set fire to the houses. Coupled with that were hurricane-force winds, which fanned the flames. Over a period of three days before the fires were extinguished, some 80 per cent of Tokyo’s homes were destroyed. One of the worst calamities occurred on the evening after the earthquake, when 40,000 people who had sought refuge in one small area by the Sumida River were burned to death in a firestorm when the wind direction changed.³²

The amount of energy released in an earthquake is enormous. In the 2011 Japanese earthquake an area of the seafloor extending over 650 kilometres north–south moved typically 10–20 metres (30–65 feet) horizontally. To put that in perspective, it is like a region extending from London to Aberdeen in one direction and from London to Bristol in the other moving abruptly 10–20 metres westward.

The effect of well-designed building codes, which saved lives in Japan, is highlighted by comparing casualty rates from three other recent earthquakes. Each was of similar size, magnitude 6.8–7.0. Each resulted from similar fault motions, originating at depths of about 10 kilometres.³³ The first was in December 1988 in the Spitak region of Armenia and caused at least 25,000 deaths. Most people died as a result of the collapse of poorly built apartments and other buildings constructed during the premiership of Leonid Brezhnev. The USSR at the time could build intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles, but were careless of building safe housing. The second earthquake, less than a year later in October 1989 at Loma Prieta in California killed only 57 people. Most of the fatalities occurred when cars were trapped beneath a collapsed freeway due shortly to be strengthened against earthquake shaking. The third, in Haiti in January 2010 caused over 230,000 deaths. The latter was perhaps the most shocking, with its casualty rate more than twice as high as any earthquake of the same size anywhere else in the world. The reason for such devastation in Haiti was prosaic enough: poorly built concrete buildings, coupled with construction on unsuitable slopes, which failed in landslides (Figure 4.1). Haiti is the poorest nation in the northern hemisphere and has suffered over recent decades both from endemic corruption by its own leaders and from neglect by its former colonial masters.³⁴

By comparing the death toll from the Haiti earthquake with that from the same size earthquake in Loma Prieta we could conclude that 99.98 per cent of the deaths in the former were due to human factors. It is a well-known aphorism that “earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do”. Sadly, although adequate building codes might be in place, in many countries where corruption is rife they are widely ignored. Ultimately, such corruption kills. One recent study suggests that 83 per cent of all deaths in earthquakes from the collapse of buildings over the past 30 years were in countries that are anomalously corrupt.³⁵ But of course even in the Californian Loma Prieta case, where corruption was not a factor in substandard building, most of the deaths were caused by the collapse of structures built by humans. So it raises the question of whether the blame should be laid at the door of humans or of God.

A major factor that is making earthquakes more deadly killers by the year is that the recurrence interval between the largest of them in any given place may be hundreds or even thousands of years. In the meantime the explosive growth of population and megacities places many urban conurbations, such as Tehran, at high risk, as we discussed in Chapter 3. Similar analyses could be presented for other megacities elsewhere in the world, such as those of northern India close to the Himalayan belt of seismicity, where death tolls could exceed a million.³⁶ These cities remain death traps even where current building codes are enforced because so many of the houses pre-date the building codes and so would not withstand major earthquake shaking.

On the boundaries between tectonic plates the earthquakes occur in narrow bands, so the areas of greatest hazard can be readily identified and appropriate measures for resilience against future shocks put in place. For example, San Francisco sits on the San Andreas Fault, which separates the Pacific plate from the American plate. The long-term rate of motion is about 40 millimetres per year. Deeper than 10–15 kilometres the earth’s crust is hot and ductile, and at great depths the motion is accommodated steadily by ductile creep. But shallower than this the crust is colder and brittle, so the stresses build up over many years. Eventually the brittle crust breaks and the accumulated motion is released in one or more big earthquakes and a multiplicity of aftershocks.

The last big earthquake on the northern San Andreas Fault was in 1906, when a 500-kilometre (310-mile) long section of the fault broke, causing horizontal displacements of up to 8 metres (26 feet) in a magnitude 7.9 earthquake. In the century since then, the stresses have been building up again, and are very likely to cause another large earthquake in the future. Many seismologists think another major earthquake on the northern San Andreas Fault near San Francisco is likely in the next few decades. On a plate boundary that is currently seismically quiet, the likelihood of another big earthquake becomes more probable with every year that goes by. So, depending on where his house at Pooh Corner was located, Eeyore’s uncharacteristic cheerfulness about the lack of a recent earthquake in the quote at the head of this chapter may have been misplaced.³⁷

In 1906, San Francisco was a boom town with some 410,000 inhabitants. Many buildings were damaged in the earthquake, but what destroyed the city were the massive fires that followed. They lasted several days and destroyed 80 per cent of the houses.³⁸ Just as in Tokyo, most of the buildings were made of wood, and fires spread rapidly (Figure 4.2). Meanwhile many of the water mains had been broken by the earthquake shaking, so efforts to stem the fire were largely ineffectual. Some of the efforts by the army to stop the fire spreading by blowing up buildings to create firebreaks actually had the opposite effect. Often the destroyed buildings were left as piles of shattered timber close to the fire front, which burned better than intact buildings. Sometimes the gunpowder explosions actually started new fires in areas where there hadn’t been any before. In one infamous case, the army blew up the building of a patent-medicine company containing thousands of gallons of alcohol, which then ignited to create a fireball. The fear of looting and disorder also meant that the army frequently prevented citizens from engaging in the firefighting. In the chaos following the earthquake, the mayor gave an order to the military to shoot looters, which resulted in an unknown number of innocent people being shot as they tried to retrieve their belongings. It is clear that human hands and actions lay heavily on much of the devastation and deaths that followed the earthquake.

Figure 4.2 San Francisco, 18 April 1906. View down Sacramento Street from Nob Hill on the first day of the fire. Facades of buildings have collapsed from the earthquake shaking, and enormous clouds of smoke approach. Residents stand and sit in the street, watching the approaching fire. (Photo: Arnold Genthe.)

Another factor that is leading to more casualties globally from earthquakes as populations increase is that many fatalities now occur in places away from the plate boundaries, where the presence of an earthquake-generating fault is not suspected. In those areas there may be little preparation for, or resilience to earthquake shaking. An example is an earthquake in Tabas, Iran in 1978, which killed 11,000 people out of a population of 13,000: a death rate of 85 per cent. Another example is the 2003 magnitude 6.6 earthquake near Bam in Iran, which killed 26,000 people, some 30 per cent of its inhabitants.³⁹ This compared with only 0.4 per cent of the affected population in Japan in 2011, even including the effects of the tsunami. In Bam a famous mud-brick c...