Everything disappears in the earth.

Earthquakes don't operate like that.

You should always try to get outside.

When an earthquake occurs in the midst of running, you can get seriously injured.

California will fall into the ocean.

Well, the answer is of course not.

Hello, I'm Veronica.

Videos.

I am obstruction engineer in by training.

I am currently President.

Adagio has international.

My name is Gerardo Suarez.

I am a senior scientist at the interested of geophysics at the National University of Mexico.

Today we are debunking myths about earthquakes and earthquake safety.

These are myths from social media.

Doorways are a safe place to take cover during an earthquake.

And Veronica, I think you're better prepared than this is definitely something we've heard from past very old construction.

And that was when the frame around doors was actually part of the skeleton of the building that really kept up the building.

That was a really strong part of the structure.

Modern construction does not have that.

In fact, the doors are not in many ways stronger, so they're really not helpful or very protective during earthquake shaking.

And in fact, I would say that holding onto the door frame If you have a swinging door during strong earthquake, you can actually get quite injured.

There's no universal recipe to be safe.

It depends on how your house, your apartment building, is built and where you live, even in what part of the city you live in.

The work has to happen before the earthquake in terms of finding a city place create a safe place.

So trying to figure out okay, if there was shaking, looking up in your own home and seeing what could fall over top of that can be heavy.

This question is about the triangle of life.

Will it save you?

You can see some of these boys after the shaking has happened, but what you don't see is what happened in between.

And so it may have been that this very dense object with strong shaking might have moved quite a distance.

Or those objects can actually topple and in many cases can actually be way more dangerous to be there.

If you could get under a sturdy table or that would probably be best, protecting your head and neck are really important.

But yes, there may be some cases where people were saved because they accidentally were trapped, became between a very strong object and perhaps a beam or something that fell down.

But I think it is more circumstantial evidence than anything else.

Earthquake proof buildings are indestructible.

I want to make a distinction between earthquake proof and earthquake resistant.

So in practice, we don't usually design or build earthquake proof buildings.

So a similarity might be waterproof versus water resistant.

And I think for a very long time we went from really trying to ensure that our designs were life safe, so they really were protecting the occupants inside the building.

Um, now what we've learned as we've seen Earth, that's another part of the world.

That doesn't mean that you're not going to have damage to a building.

And so it may be that after an earthquake, you're building no longer functions and you can no longer stay in it.

And if that happens on a grand scale, all of a sudden you have an entire city that can't be houses or buildings that can be used for businesses, and so it really affects the economy and the community as a whole.

and now there's a big movement to try to move towards designing not just for life safety, but actually what's called functional recovery with the idea that you can recover, um, in a shorter time spans.

Small earthquakes prevent bigger ones from happening.

Well, I bear bad news for people who believe in this because, uh, you know people to say, Oh, it's been very active, you know, lots of small earthquakes.

So they're taking up the energy that's concentrated on default.

And indeed, yes, they're releasing some energy.

And that happens in places that we call subduction zones where one tectonic plate goes under another one, that there are dozens, literally hundreds of small earthquakes in a certain time frame in a certain place.

But eventually in this active faults you will have a major earthquake, and by Major, I would just say, larger than magnitude seven point five that is required to release the energy that has been accumulated.

I think there's a misconception that it's only the very big one that's going to be the most dangerous.

But in fact, what we see is that even with moderate earthquakes, um, there can be a lot of actually injuries and that even un reinforced chimneys we know are very vulnerable to classrooms and under very low levels of shaking.

And those falling into a household, for example, can be very dangerous.

We are overdue for a major earthquake.

So when we say overdue, we imply that we know the earthquake should have occurred before and it hasn't, and this is something that we simply do not don't prediction versus forecasting.

I think that's where we get a little bit of misunderstanding because we can forecast usually improbabilities.

We say there's a probability that they will be this size of earthquake within this region, and so we really can't predict specifically where and when to north people occur.

Everyone who lives in a seismic area should be aware everyone should have a kid at home.

You need to have some water.

You need to have a lamp light and so on and so forth.

Okay, These are myths from pop culture.

You should always try to get outside when an earthquake occurs.

But for the most part, this is probably not a very safe practice to run outside during earthquakes, shaking, especially because many times things can fall outwards.

in the midst of running.

You can get seriously injured in the one situation where it is a good idea, and that's gonna go be urban building that is not strengthened or reinforced in some way.

Those buildings are particularly dangerous when you have a heavy roof.

If you're on the ground floor one of these buildings, you do want to try to run out, assuming you're running out into a space that's open.

But if you're already outside, stay outside.

Kind of.

You want to try to get away from from building facades because the beauty bricks falling.

You want to be very careful about that.

The ground can open up during an earthquake.

It is a myth that has to be debunked.

This myth comes very much from earthquake movies, where you see that during the earthquake there's a big crack that opens, and it swallows buildings and people and cars, and then it just pull.

It shuts tight and everything disappears in the earth.

And this this doesn't happen.

Earthquakes don't operate like that in certain type of soils.

Cracks are formed because of the very strong shaking, but these are relatively shallow cracks.

I mean, they wouldn't swallow, not even a small cat.

And probably that image was extrapolated into this fantastic idea of these huge mouths swallowing everything in its surroundings.

So, no, the answer is, is definitely not in the US.

A big enough earthquake on the West Coast could be felt on the East Coast.

It will be so big that even though it's happening here in California, you will feel it on the East Coast.

No, that is not.

What we expect is just a big enough distance that we don't expect anyone to stealing these significant shaking on the East Coast from, uh, earthquake on the on the West Coast, the plates and the type of rock that we have on the East Coast versus the West Coast.

They are different.

And so what happens is that the type of, uh, rock that we have in the East Coast earthquake waves seismic waves and actually travel much further.

So what happens is that in the East Coast you'll be able to perceive or feel significant shaking, actually much further distances from the epicenter of the origin of where the earthquake shaking started as opposed to the West coast, where those seismic waves.

Actually, that energy is absorbed much quicker, and so it doesn't travel as much of a far distance.

We are able to predict earthquakes.

This is a very simple answer is no no.

We cannot yet predict earthquakes.

And I added the word yet I would say that now it continues to be the goal of seismology.

To be able to predict earthquakes.

I believe the goal of everyone who works in seismology for an engineering seismology.

It is not to predict earthquakes, but to be prepared for major earthquakes to understand the phenomenon there.

There are use of what we call earthquake scenarios, Um, and what those are?

They're not predictions, but they're incredibly useful in the sense that many times we don't see changes in codes or anything until after there's an earthquake and we learned everything that went wrong.

We use the tool of earthquake scenario, so we choose believable earthquake.

That could happen in a certain area to try to understand what maybe some of the key vulnerabilities around that particular city or area, whether it's a water system or the housing or the hospitals to try to get ahead and trying to and still safer practices or actions that will help us address those vulnerabilities before nor figure first midst expert here the most.

So in tall buildings, it's always safer to be on a lower floor.

If you're in a tall building, especially in a place where the codes are usually followed, it's likely that they're actually, they're even higher requirements in terms of design.

And so funds of the building is safe.

It doesn't.

It doesn't matter too much where you are.

That being said, if there is more movements, that's when there is really, really important to make sure that the contents within your house or whatever the office building are secured and that they can't fall over and topple over and hurt you.

California will fall into the ocean.

Well, the answer is, of course not.

California would not fall into the ocean part of California, the westernmost sliver of California.

It sits on the Pacific Plate, whereas the rest of California sits on the North American plate, and these two plates move one relative to one another at a rate of about five to six centimeters per year.

So, yes, when people say Los Angeles is going to end up near Anchorage?

Well, yes, eventually, but in many millions of years.

Okay, there's such thing as earthquake weather.

But no, there is no season for earthquakes.

There is no weather for earthquakes, and there is no specific time for earthquakes.

You might be thinking of a very, very convenient time that an earthquake would happen.

It would be very inconvenient.

You think about earthquakes, shake and you have to think about different times of the year and different times of the day.

You might be sleeping or it might be winter.

It might be rainy, and so the danger is that you're not thinking of kind of all these scenarios.

Bigger earthquakes happen under full moons.

People connect that to the pull of tides.

And it's true.

We are very used to the ocean being deformed and the water level changing due to the tides, depending on the cycles of the moon.

And this also happens in the earth, the earth itself.

The continents themselves are deformed because of this rotation of the moon.

The deformation is not large enough to produce earthquakes, and people have looked at statistics to see, and there has been absolutely no court relation at all.

A lot of the actions that you need to take to really protect community and to protect people need to be taken years before the earthquake actually arrives.