Disaster-prone cities worry about next big one

updated 8:14 a.m. ET Sept. 19, 2005

The story of the last big one is the stuff of legend in Tennessee: In the winter of 1812, when a series of massive earthquakes struck the Mississippi River valley, the shaking was so violent, folks say, that the mighty river ran backward for a time, and church bells and curtain tassels on the East Coast were set ringing and swaying.

Those who survived were left to wonder if the end of the world was upon them.

The cataclysm along the New Madrid fault dissolved into local lore and the perennial threat in this seismic zone in the central United States was largely forgotten — until Katrina.

These days, in Memphis and in many other places across the country that have predictable threats of disasters — from hurricane- and quake-prone stretches of the coasts to tornado alleys in the Plains, from Northwest towns where volcanoes loom to busy cities where terrorists could strike — talk has moved from the last big one to the next big one.

Katrina has revived scenarios of tornadoes landing on downtown Kansas City, of mud burying Tacoma, of a Category 5 hurricane wrecking Houston, of chemical agents released on the Las Vegas Strip, of wildfires sweeping Los Angeles.

Glimpse at the worst-case scenario
The images of destruction and suffering in New Orleans have chastened officials and average citizens, stretching their imaginations. Suddenly, those dusty worst-case scenarios, long unthinkable and almost theoretical, are plausible, frightening, and no longer ignored.

“I think people are going, ‘Will Memphis be next?’” said Ray Pohlman, who works at the corporate headquarters of Memphis-based AutoZone, the auto parts giant that occupies an eight-story building on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River. The threat seems more real today, he said, than it did last month.

Katrina showed the largest-scale natural disasters can and do happen, and that even with considerable warning and precaution, so much can still go wrong. And the hurricane has given tangible form to fears of a terrorist attack bigger than that of Sept. 11.

President Bush, in his Thursday night speech from New Orleans, announced that the Department of Homeland Security will undertake an immediate review of emergency plans in every major city in America. “This government will learn the lessons of Hurricane Katrina,” he said.

Politicians and emergency officials all over the country have pledged to reevaluate disaster plans and resources — after Katrina proved how easily law and order can be lost, how fragile and flawed the telephone infrastructure can be, how important it is to have food and water readily available, how the poor and disabled are especially vulnerable in a disaster.

Reconsidering the cavalry’s role
Another paramount lesson for many: The federal government cannot be counted on for immediate help. Localities and even individuals must have their own emergency plans.

“We can’t expect meaningful federal support to be on the ground providing provisions in an organized manner until probably the seventh day,” said Eric Holdeman, with the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management in Seattle. “Our emergency response system is geared toward everyday emergencies, not disasters ... People need to be able to help themselves.”

Others agreed an event as large as Katrina cannot be managed by any city or state alone. Tennessee’s capacity to house evacuees was spent completely by Katrina, as it absorbed about 20,000 people. What if, like New Orleanians, Memphis’ 650,000 residents suddenly needed somewhere else to go?

Fearing the worst in Dixie
Another quake of the magnitude of the 1812 temblor hitting Memphis could supplant Katrina as the country’s worst natural disaster. Most of downtown Memphis, made of brick and concrete, would fall. Bridges and highways would be shattered. Gas lines would rupture. And the Mississippi River, if already near flood stage, could put large parts of Arkansas underwater.

None of these predictions are new. But they’re real now.

Gett Images File Emergency planners fear many of the old brick buildings in downtown Memphis, Tenn., would collapse if the city were ever hit by a major quake like the great 1812 temblor.

“I don’t think we’ve ever talked about pre-positioning food caches before,” said Kurt Pickering, spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s office in Tennessee. “I thought we’d never be able to fund satellite telephones ... I don’t want to tell the legislature how to spend the state’s money, but I’m thinking now it might be doable because of Katrina.”

Two states upriver, St. Louis suffered through a devastating flood only 12 years ago. The day Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, local emergency managers started reviewing flood plans in the area, which is also prone to tornadoes and is within the New Madrid seismic zone.

“It says it could happen here,” said St. Louis emergency director Gary Christmann.

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