EPA Earthquake Resilience Tools

Having grown up in California and lived through the Sylmar quake in ’71 I have a healthy respect for this particular physical hazard. Thus, I appreciate Bridget O’Grady’s blog post from earlier this week pointing at an EPA earthquake resiliency resource for water treatment facilities.

It is interesting to note the EPA’s explanation of why water treatment and waste water treatment facilities are vulnerable to earthquake damage:

“Water and wastewater utilities are particularly vulnerable to earthquakes because of the extensive network of above and below ground pipelines, pumps, tanks, administrative and laboratory buildings, reservoirs, chemical storage buildings and treatment facilities.”

The same can certainly be said for chemical manufacturing facilities (okay, all facilities, but this is a chemical security and safety blog), so much of the information on the three tools will be useful for chemical manufacturers as well.