Experts monitor earthquakes and fault lines in the metropolitan area

Albany – This story may require a seismic shift in thinking.

Earthquakes are constant in New York State. In Helderbergs, Albany County alone, there have been 92 since 1978, 61 between February 2009 and July 2011 with two recording 3.2 on the volume scale, and in recent weeks, two have scored 1.9 and 2.0.

“They were all very small,” said Charles Fair Straiten, a geologist at the State Museum of New York. “Most of them didn’t notice.”

And it’s not just in the Albany Hilltowns County. Statewide, between 1737 and 2016, New York was rocked by 551 earthquakes.

While most did no damage, a 2003 study by the New York City District Earthquake Loss Mitigation Consortium indicated that the city and its suburbs could experience an earthquake large enough to cause billions of dollars in damage. If, for example, a strong attack were to hit Manhattan, the study estimated it would cost $200 billion just to replace transportation and utilities — that number was 20 years ago.

The four-year study found that “future earthquakes of magnitude 5.2 are, on average, likely to occur every 100 to 200 years with a 20 to 40 percent probability of occurring in any 50-year period.” It also found that New York City is “generally considered low-risk” but “high-risk due to its population density, poor infrastructure and significant economic value”.

Even if a major earthquake was on its way, like the 1944 Massina 5.8 earthquake that shattered windows, slashed foundations and knocked down chimneys, Fair Streeten said, it would be hard to predict. With no predictive tools, seismologists can only measure impacts and locations once fault lines are awakened.

“There are papers about wild animals, which led to an earthquake, and they worked differently,” said Ver Straiten, who monitors the museum’s seismometer. “There’s even a study on frogs. Wildlife is going to try and do something to keep them safe.”

But this is not enough to predict what will happen along the fault lines that surround the country. He said New York’s most active fault lines run through New York City to New Jersey and from the northern tip of the Adirondacks to Quebec and Ontario. There are also fault lines in western New York and in the southern Adirondacks that extend north of Schenectady into the Mohawk Valley. All those springs in Saratoga Springs are drawing open fault lines, he said.

Because New York earthquakes are caused by shifting fault lines, Verstraiten said, they usually don’t cause massive destruction like those that surround the Pacific Ocean. These are more explosive, he said, and also cause volcanic eruptions, because they lie on a tectonic boundary – a place where the Earth’s plates meet and move.

“New York is not along an active plate boundary,” Ver Straiten said. “The closest plate boundary where the plates separate is in the middle of the Atlantic. But we have ancient faults that are sometimes active.”

In addition to the Massena earthquake, the state’s second largest earthquake was in New York City, with two roughly 5.2 magnitude earthquakes—one in 1737 and one in 1884—both estimated to be strong based on newspaper accounts. Attica was hit by a magnitude 5.2 earthquake in 1929 while Goodnow and Ospel Forex shook 5.1 in 1983 and 2002, respectively.

Ver Straeten said it’s not only New York’s fault lines that can shake the metropolitan area. He noted the 2011 Virginia earthquake, 5.8, which had towers in Albany swaying, and another in China in 2008 that sent waves that were recorded in the museum for more than an hour. But he said it was uncertain whether or when New York would experience something like the Massina earthquake, the largest known earthquake to hit the state.

“Earthquakes like this can happen in New York,” Ver Straiten said. “There can be an important question. How often is the question. Generally no more than 3.0 or 4.0.”

However, a 2003 report concluded that even a minor earthquake can be catastrophic—particularly in New York City.

“Although New York City is a low seismic risk area, it is in fact a high seismic risk due to its massive assets, building concentration and the fragility of its structures, most of which were not designed seismically.”

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