EARTHQUAKE DANGERS FOR NYC

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. - An analysis of recent earthquake activity
around New York City has found that many small faults that were
believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous
earthquake.

The study also finds that a line of seismic activity stretching
from Stamford, Conn., to Peekskill comes within two miles of the Indian
Point nuclear power plant in Buchanan. Another fault line near the
plant was already known, so the findings suggest Indian Point is at an
intersection of faults.

The study's authors, who work at Columbia University's
Lamont-Doherty Observatory in Palisades, acknowledge that the biggest
earthquakes - in the 6 or 7 magnitude range - are rare in the New York
City region. They say a quake of magnitude 7 probably comes about every
3,400 years.

But they note that no one knows when the last one hit, and because
of the population density and the concentration of buildings and
financial assets, many lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are at
risk.

Co-author Leonardo Seeber said in an interview that although the
metropolitan area does not have a single great fault like the San
Andreas fault in California, "Not having a major fault is not a reason
not to worry about earthquakes."

"Instead of having a single major fault or a few major faults, we
tend to have a lot of very minor and sort of subtle faults," he said.
"It's a family of faults, and that can contribute to the severity of an
earthquake."

John Ebel, director of seismology at Boston College's Weston
Observatory, said he agreed with the study's finding that small faults
can contribute to large earthquakes. "A quake can jump from one fault
to another," he said.

The study, published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society
of America, analyzed 383 known earthquakes over the past 330 years in
or near New York City. The biggest were three that reached magnitude 5
in 1737, 1783 and 1884.

Data on earthquakes since the early 1970s, when Lamont deployed
dozens of new detectors, enabled the authors to see patterns from
smaller quakes, including the magnitude 4.1 quake that was centered on
Ardsley, in Westchester County, in 1985.