Minneapolis: Low on Disasters
According to SustainLane.com, Minneapolis is a safe city to live in. The ‘community resource for healthy and sustainable living’ calculated the risk of natural disasters for 50 major metro areas and found Minneapolis to be the 8th safest (via UPI). What disasters are we at risk for and which ones are we missing out on?
The good folks at the University of Minnesota have estimated that an earthquake of magnitude 4 could occur every 10 years, a 4.5 every 30 years, a 5 every 89 years, and a 5.5 every 266 years. Anything stronger would likely occur in the range of many hundreds to thousands of years. For some perspective, the 1993 Northridge earthquake that killed 57 people was a 6.7, and the World Series earthquake of 1989 was 7.1 and killed 63 people. Our risk for a dangerous earthquake is very, very low.
Fortunately, we don’t get hurricanes this far inland.
We have some flood risk with the rivers in the area, but high bluffs around the rivers make a major flood event seem a bit unlikely. Even though the Twin Cities aren’t particularly prone to major flood events, the 1965 flood was kinda big. Fortnuately, we’re too far inland for tsunamis.
The only real risks we have in the Twin Cities are catastrophic hail and tornadoes. In 1981, a large tornado hit Edina, Minneapolis and Roseville. And of course, there was the infamous Fridley tornado in 1965
that killed 13 and injured 683. The hailstorms can get a bit crazy too and cause over $1 billion in damage as happened on May 15, 1998.
Had the rankings factored in our winters, the results might have been quite a bit different, don’t you think?
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It’s funny - you’re comfortable with what you know. There are people out west who would much rather prefer the risk of an earthquake than a tornado, and the same goes for people out east with hurricanes. Some people not from around here are terrified of tornados.
I have a morbid fascination with the science around natural disasters.
About 6 mos ago, I watched some made-for-TV movie using the premise that if the Caldera (gigantic bubble of lava) under Yellowstone National Park blows up, Minneapolis will be doomed!