The probability that at some point in the next 50 years a strong earthquake will occur in Israel is very high. The previous major earthquakes in the country affected a radius of up to 80 kilometers, so all the cities of the country are at high risk. Another danger is posed by enemy countries that will be outside the scope of the noise impact and will take advantage of the opportunity
Black Dahlia
Direct link to this page: https://www.hayadan.org.il/reida020502.html
"At any moment a strong earthquake can happen in the country, but statistically we say that an earthquake will be 'between 70 and 100 years', so as not to put the people into all kinds of panic and panic," said Yaakov Hichel, Chairman of the Steering Committee of the Ministerial Preparedness Committee for the treatment of earthquakes, in his testimony before the Zeiler Committee - the state investigation committee regarding the safety of buildings and public places that was established following the Versailles disaster. "We start from the basic assumption," Hichal said, "that a strong earthquake will occur in Israel within 50 years, because statistically there was a strong earthquake in the region of Israel approximately every 90-80 years. The last one was in 1927. Jerusalem was hit then, Nablus, Jericho, a little Lod, a little Ramla. The strongest earthquake before that was in 1837. The north was then the main focus. The Galilee, the area of Beit Shan, Safed, in which, according to the data, 3,000 people were killed, because there were simply no more residents. Since nothing has happened in the area in the last 80-70 years, the risk is increasing."
Photo: Yehuda ben Yathach
After an earthquake in the area of Eilat, 1995. Each year about 4,000 small earthquakes occur in Israel
Hichal managed to startle the members of the committee. One of them, Major General Yitzhak Ben-Israel, head of the Ministry of Defense (Research and Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure), asked: "So we are close..." and Hichal burst into his words: "Very close. I'm talking about a strong earthquake. Because there are approximately 4,000 earthquakes per year in Israel, but small, with low intensities. The intensity we are talking about (of the earthquake that will come) is about a magnitude of 6.4, 6.3, 6.2 which causes damage." Later, Hall detailed scenarios of horrors of damage to life and property, as worked out by the committee, until Judge Verdi Zeiler asked, in a kind of comical tone: "Just tell us where we should live." And when the temple spoke about the procedures for handling the spaces and said that in the event of a disaster, the dead can be buried in Jerusalem within 48 hours and not in the same day, since "you have to be located first, identify you, because if you are not recognized, nothing can be done," Zeiler asked: "What are you referring to? to me?"
Dr. Avi Shapira, head of the seismology department at the Geophysical Institute at the Ministry of Infrastructure, agrees that an earthquake can occur at any minute. According to him, there is no cycle in earthquakes. "An earthquake is a random phenomenon in time. There is no such thing as an earthquake every 90, 80 years." However, at the Geophysical Institute, a probabilistic calculation is made, and the probability that at some point in the next 50 years an earthquake will occur is very high, because for a long time there has not been a strong earthquake in Israel and energy has accumulated that must be released. In any case, the conclusion is the same as Hichal's.
The whole country is at risk
The center of gravity of the earthquakes in Israel is in the Jordan Valley, along the Syrian-African fault. This fault serves as a boundary between two plates in the earth's crust: the Arab plate to the east, and the Sinai-Israel plate to the west. At the boundaries of the plates energy accumulates, and its sudden release manifests itself in an earthquake. Most of the deadly earthquakes that happened in Israel were along this fault, with an estimated magnitude of 6.2 to 6.6, capable of affecting a radius of 80-70 kilometers. According to this figure, all settlements in the country are vulnerable to earthquakes. The accepted estimate is that the earthquake that will occur along the Dead Sea rift will have a magnitude of about 7.5
Another dangerous fault is the Yagor fault, south of Haifa, towards the sea. This is an active fault, which produces weaker earthquakes than the Syrian-African fault, but they are very dangerous due to their close proximity to population centers - Haifa and the Kiryat - and the industrial centers in the Gulf region: factories, power plants and refineries, which store large quantities of dangerous substances such as chlorine, ammonia and cyanide, Fuel and gas. Dr. Shapira says that it is possible to prevent injury to the soul in the Bay Area during an earthquake through proper construction in the future. But if the noise is in five minutes, "there will be a catastrophe".
According to a preliminary estimate calculated by the Hichal committee, the number of people killed in an earthquake will be between 5,000 (the Yagor fault) and 10,000 (the Syrian-African fault), apart from thousands of seriously injured people, hundreds of thousands of evacuees, thousands of destroyed houses and tens of thousands of damaged houses. This estimate does not include economic damages due to the destruction of roads, bridges, airports, ports, public facilities, power plants and industrial plants. These are estimated at 50 billion dollars.
Economic damage to the economy of this magnitude could endanger Israel's national strength. The situation may be exploited from within - anti-democratic forces, or from outside, enemy countries such as Iraq - to attack Israel. The answer to anti-democratic activity, Hichal says, is to guarantee a quick and efficient treatment of damages and to restore life to its course.
As for the possibility of an external attack, countries like Jordan and Lebanon may also be busy dealing with the earthquake damage. But countries like Iraq, Iran, Libya, and possibly Syria, will be outside the scope of the noise's impact.
Both fractions will not operate at the same time, yet, according to Hichal, all Israeli cities are at a high risk level. Beer Sheva, for example, will be harmed if the noise is in the Dead Sea; Eilat will be vulnerable if the noise is in the Red Sea. Ashdod is at a high level of risk, since to the north of it there is the Palmahim outline - a geologically sensitive area, where seismic tests are now about to be conducted. The Palmachim layout can also affect the tributary port in Ashdod, located five kilometers south of it. The new port, which will be larger than the current one, will be used for unloading, loading and storing cargo, including hazardous materials. Hichal asked the Ports and Railways Authority if a risk assessment of hazardous materials was carried out in the planning of the Jubilee Port, which took seismic considerations into account. He responded positively, but was not convinced and asked to see the data within two weeks.
Shapira is less upset. Seismic activity is seen in this area, he says, but its significance is still unclear. "For the purpose of risk assessment, we assume that it is an active copy (from the word copy, move). But this is not necessarily true. It will take a long time before we know what is happening there." Regarding the possible impact on the Jubilee port, he says: "What we see as seismologists is that there are earthquakes in this area. For the purpose of planning, we must take into account that it might turn out to be an active copy. But we don't think at the moment that there will be a strong earthquake in Palmahim."
The miners are safe
Shapira is not concerned about the safety of the nuclear reactors either. The seismological division provided them with data according to their request, and he assumes "that they didn't just ask. They designed it so that these things would be safe." He relies on world experience which shows that nuclear reactors have been found to be "the safest thing" in severe earthquakes.
An earthquake cannot be predicted. "It will fall like thunder on a clear day," says Hichal. The company "Abtifus Patents and Inventions Ltd" from the "Nashul Electronics Ltd" group has developed an earthquake detector system (unit price NIS 500) that gives a 10 second warning when the epicenter is about 100 kilometers away. The speed of operation of the sensors in the system is much greater than the speed of oscillations of the ground waves in an earthquake (which is 14.5 km per second), and this is how the difference that provides the warning time is created. The 10 seconds make it possible to perform automatic actions, such as closing electrical circuits or gas bodies, to reduce damage. But devices of this type may also give false warnings, and then "if the electric company closes the switchboard, and a nuclear reactor closes the reactor, it will take months until they put the system back into operation," Hichal says. Other systems, developed on behalf of the governments in Taiwan, Mexico and the USA, can give a warning of about a minute, but their operation is very expensive. The matter is now being examined by the steering committee.
The Seismology Division operates a network of seismic stations and an array of accelerometers throughout the country, which operate 24 hours a day and transmit data based on which they calculate where earthquakes occur, when and with what intensity. This system will provide the information and seismological assessments, in the event of the earthquake, to the state authorities and the public. The situational picture will be completed by collecting information in the field.
The steering committee headed by Hichal, which was established in December, '99 established orders and procedures that would reduce the chaos at the moment of the earthquake. The government decided back in August 2001 on how to distribute responsibilities among all government ministries, according to the committee's recommendation. The responsibility for handling the incident will be in the hands of the IDF - the Home Front Command, which will receive its instructions from the Minister of Defense, that is, from the government. An earthquake, Hichal says, requires a change in perception. "An earthquake can kill 10,000 people per minute. Everything was destroyed. No house, no shop, no pharmacy, no hotels. "Malach (emergency farm) needs to make sure that food, water, fuel, flour, bread reach the man himself."
The preparation will be accordingly: the local authorities will provide heavy equipment for rescue operations, supplies and medical help in the first 36 to 48 hours. Welfare services will help the homeless and the elderly. The electric company will cut off the electricity to the disaster area. A large-scale national disaster contact system is in the process of preparation. The army will be mobilized and enter the affected places after about two days to deal with the incident. At the end of a week from the earthquake, the army will leave, and the initial reconstruction phase will begin, which will be the responsibility of the military and last six weeks. Malah will coordinate between the forces operating in the field and establish priorities for finding housing for those in need, for supplying water, food and clothing. The engineers of the Ministry of Construction and Housing and the local authority will inspect the houses, assess damages, and will be involved in the restoration of the buildings and the preparation of alternative housing. The Passover Authority (Evacuation, Relief, Vacancies) will ensure the reception of the population in facilities outside the disaster area and will operate stations for the concentration of Vacancies. At the end of six weeks, the long-term rehabilitation phase will begin, which will last about 15 years.
All the experts agree that people are killed in an earthquake not by the noise itself but by accompanying phenomena: the collapse of buildings (strengthening them can prevent this), falling objects, broken glass, fires and people's improper behavior. The information center is responsible for the national information campaign to prepare the population for an earthquake, and it is going to send to every house in Israel in July or September, with the electricity bill, an information leaflet about an earthquake that will include rules of conduct in such a case. Among the recommendations in the previous stage for the earthquake: strengthen or fix every object in the house that may move; attach libraries to the walls and strengthen the shelves; add support for air conditioners, antennas and solar heaters, and strengthen and firmly fix gutters, roof tiles and sheds; lock the wheels of the refrigerator and the washing machine; store glassware in a closed place; Keep flammable or toxic liquid (paints, cleaning agents) in a closed container, away from a heat source.
It is recommended that all members of the household know where the main switches for electricity, gas and water are, and it is recommended to have a fire extinguisher and an emergency kit close at hand.
The school was built on an active replica
A relatively new and dangerous issue is construction on active fault lines. Recently, the Geological Institute in the Ministry of Infrastructure released the map of the copies (movements) in Israel suspected of young activity. In his testimony before the Zeiler committee, Yaakov Hichel, chairman of the steering committee for preparedness for dealing with earthquakes, said that there is a regulation that prohibits building on an active fault line up to 14 meters from each of its sides. But in Bigor the new state school was built on the active fault, and in Eilat the sewage treatment plant, the airport and the expansion of the Yoseftal hospital were built on an active fault, or in the area of an active fault.
Dr. Avi Shapira, head of the seismology department at the Geophysical Institute in the Ministry of Infrastructure, is less worried. "In Eilat there is a neighborhood called the Shahmon neighborhood, which is the only place in Israel that I know of where active copycats were taken into account," he said. He knows of no other sites built on active fractures. "The only place that might be problematic is the Haifa area, at the foot of Carmel," he said. "It is possible that there are places that sit right on the fault. But it is not conclusive, because they did not check it to the end."
Magnitude instead of the Richter scale
Magnitude: a measure of the amount of energy released at the epicenter of the earthquake. Each tremor is measured according to its strength and magnitude. Until recent years, it was customary to use the Richter scale, which was the first to propose a method for calculating magnitude. However, over time it became clear that it is better to calculate the magnitude using other methods.
According to the index used today, an earthquake with a magnitude below 3.5 is an earthquake that is not felt. An earthquake with a magnitude of 5, if it occurs in a populated area, may cause minor damage. An earthquake with a magnitude of 6 or higher, if it occurs in a populated area, causes disasters.
Idan Earth - the stalwarts of nature
https://www.hayadan.org.il/BuildaGate4/general2/data_card.php?Cat=~~~321142116~~~138&SiteName=hayadan
