Earthquake Responses: What Makes Them 'Different' for Firefighters?

摘要

On march 11, 2011, I overheard some of my classmates discussing a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. I was attending a class at the National Fire Academy and had failed to catch the morning news. My son, a member of the U.S. Marines, was stationed on the island of Okinawa. At the earliest opportunity, I called him-10,000 miles and 12 times zones away. I woke him up. Less than 1,500 miles north of his base, nearly 30,000 people were reported dead or missing, with tens of thousands more injured. My son insisted that no one on the island even felt the earthquake. Earthquakes pose a unique threat because they strike without warning and are capable of sudden, widespread devastation. Simply denned, an earthquake is the vibration caused by two types of shock waves (faster-moving "P" waves followed by slower-moving and far more powerful and damaging "S" waves) racing through the crust of the Earth after a sudden rupture of the crust along a fault.