Catastrophes!: Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes, and Other Earth-Shattering Disasters

1 Earthquakes: The Earth in Upheaval

1 Earthquakes The Earth in Upheaval A bad earthquake at once destroys our oldest associations: the earth, the very emblem of solidity, has moved beneath our feet like a thin crust over fluid; one second of time has created in the mind a strong idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have produced. —Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, 1839 The End of Optimism: Lisbon, 1755 November 1, 1755, was All Saints’ Day, one of the holiest days on the Roman Catholic calendar. In the mighty city of Lisbon, Portugal, the faithful were crowding the streets. They were heading toward the great cathedrals and smaller churches that had been built over 200 years by the wealth of the Portuguese trade empire that ranged from Brazil to southern Africa and from India to China. Lisbon was one of the largest and richest cities in Europe, with more than a quarter of a million people and many magnificent palaces and public buildings. However, the Portuguese empire had begun to rot and stagnate since its prime two centuries earlier. Downtown was a medieval warren 10 Catastrophes! of narrow, crooked streets, penetrating poorly built slums, with no sewage system or reliable fresh water. Lisbon’s poor were exposed to disease and misery, compounded by a social system ruled by an ineffective monarchy and effete noblemen competing for the biggest palaces and fanciest balls while riding in coaches or sedan chairs to avoid the filthy streets. The educational system was practically nonexistent; therefore, most people were ignorant and superstitious . Portugal had not fostered a middle class of merchants and artisans to bridge the gap between rich and poor, relegating those trading jobs to foreign merchants. The Catholic Church, and especially the Jesuits, held absolute power over the people and the educational system. The church enforced its power with the bloody Inquisition, routinely torturing Jews and other heretics by breaking them on the rack and burning people at the stake for the slightest transgression from orthodoxy. This was the situation on November 1, 1755. By 9:30 a.m., most of the population was already packed into the church pews or in the streets on their way to mass. The day had dawned crisp and cloudless. The priests had just begun chanting “Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum . . .” when the cathedrals and churches started to sway and lurch from side to side, like ships tossed on the waves (fig. 1.1). The bronze bells in the towers began to ring madly, and the many candles in the churches toppled over. Huge blocks of masonry fell, crushing fearful worshipers as they prayed. Those who rushed outside found the city enveloped in a huge dust cloud, making the morning almost as dark as midnight. Many died as the second larger shock struck a few minutes later, toppling most of the buildings that had managed to withstand the first tremor. Those who could run from the collapsing city and dust clouds sought refuge along the quays of the harbor. However, about 90 minutes after the first great shock, the first of three huge tsunamis (seismic sea waves) rolled in and washed nearly everyone in the port out to sea. These waves sank all but the largest merchant ships and warships and washed away the docks and warehouses and nearly all the coastal infrastructure. Meanwhile, back in the city, the many fallen candles and broken hearths set fire to the highly flammable wooden buildings, and soon the entire city was engulfed in a conflagration Fig. 1.1. Artist’s conception of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. (Copper engraving, France; original in Museu da Cidade, Lisbon. Reproduced in O Terramoto de 1755, Testamunhos Britanicos. Courtesy Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center Earthquake Engineering Online Archive.) 12 Catastrophes! that destroyed everything combustible, leaving only the stone ruins unburned. Many of the victims trapped in the rubble were asphyxiated or burned to death by the ensuing fires. There was no one to rescue them, and the handful of able-bodied survivors were too stunned and frightened to mount much of a rescue effort or attempt to fight the flames when the city’s water system had been destroyed. This eyewitness account by Charles Davy, a British merchant living in Lisbon , is particularly horrifying: There never was a finer morning seen than the 1st of November; the sun shone out in its full luster; the whole face of the sky was...