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With regards to which natural disaster I'd rather have.. well I'd opt for hurricanes. The thought of living in a place where the possibility of a massive earthquake enough to destroy a city terrifies me.
Do you have any insects/snakes/big animals in general that can kill you in Argentina? We don't, or very small numbers of them at least. I've noticed a few times that there seems to be more biodiversity in general in continental Europe than on our tame little island.
In Buenos Aires: Huge mosquitos in spring, summer and autumn.
I guess in Argentina there must be montanious zones with snakes, and other zones with big animals. Dont know much about the subject.
BA in the hot summer nights is full of moths, mosquitos and diverse flying bugs.
Thank god there arent cockroaches in the buildings, cause they are fumigated monthly.
I dont know about the "can kill you" part. There probably are in some zones of the country? I have no idea.
With regards to which natural disaster I'd rather have.. well I'd opt for hurricanes. The thought of living in a place where the possibility of a massive earthquake enough to destroy a city terrifies me.
Hurricane Katrina caused $81 billion in damage, and killed 1,836 people. Thats twice as much damage as any earthquake has ever caused in the US. The hurricane of 1900, killed twice as many people as died in the 1906 San Francisco quake. I'd guess the risk is at least 2x greater for hurricanes.
Plus hurricanes seem to hit the US a couple times a year, with a big one every 3 - 5 years or so. California has probably one big earthquake probably every 10 -20 years.
For me the biggest pain in living in a hurricane area, would be having to pack up and evacuate every couple of years. Being out of work and sitting in a motel inland for a week, would get expensive.
One good thing, about earthquakes, you don't have to evacuate. Because they come without warning.
Yet any low lying coastal area would still be at risk of tsunami or storm surge.
As for the mountains, IIRC, they are related to the Appalachian chain, formed millions of years ago just to have continental drift tear them apart. Old, ancient fault lines can even be seen in them. If there is an active fault still in your area beneath them, it may very well produce something big someday. The New Madrid fault, for example, is nowhere near a plate boundary, yet has produced very powerful earthquakes in the past.
Don't think so. Most of the bi is sheltered sway from a tsunami. I live on the north coast there is no way we'd get a tsunami from Spain 1300 miles away. Only way we'd get one is if iceland had a powerfully earthquake.
Western Washington, as well as Western Oregon, and Western British Columbia, has been long overdue for "the big one" for many years now. This will occur with the Cascadia Subduction Zone ruptures, and is expected to produce a megathrust quake in excess of 9.0 magnitude.
The Greater Seattle Area itself is riddled with fault lines, and one of them, which runs underneath downtown Seattle and out into Elliot Bay, is capable of producing a massive earthquake as well.
However, we just accept this possibility and go about our daily lives. Smart people, such as myself, have stock piles of water and non perishable food for just such an emergency, but you can't let the "what if" run your life. In all reality, this earthquake could happen in 5 minutes, or 500 years from now. There is just no way to tell for sure.
The last big quake around here was the Nisqually earthquake, which hit just before 11am on the morning of February 28, 2001, measuring in at 6.8. 2001 Nisqually earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia This quake occurred just the morning after another very unfortunate event in Seattle history (the mardi gras riots, in which one man was beat to death).
There should be some catastrophic earthquakes here over the next how-ever-many-years as the Juan de Fuca plate subducts under the NA plate.
In all my years of living in Oregon (14 or so), I've only ever felt one or two earthquakes. I don't remember if I felt the Nisqually earthquake or not but I did feel a magnitude 3.x earlier this year.
I do not live in a high risk area but I was 9 miles from the epicenter of a 5.3 mag earthquake once. No real damage but mighty scary for the 20 seconds or so. Building made lots of terrifying noises, sounded like it was falling from the top down. In fact I thought it was.
I felt the Nisqually earthquake here but it more or less made the dishes rattle on the table and that's about it... no damage. The largest Earthquake I felt was a 4.x earthquake in Acapulco.. I was staying in the 10th floor of a hotel and it woke me up in the morning.. must be the best alarm clock in the world
I lived in Salt Lake City for many years...people were always going on and on about the "big one"...due any day now...from the Wasatch Fault, which I basically lived right on...the line goes right behind the old Cottonwood Mall.
There were a few small shakers, nothing major...when that fault does go..it will be a bad one, because Salt Lake City is like Mexico City, it lays on a clay bed of old Lake Bonneville, and will keep rattling and shaking long after the quake goes.
I never really gave it much thought. It will happen when it happens. Geologic time.
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