“Bracing for the Big One”

This article is the lesser of two very nearly Yellow journalist articles in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today.  Yellow journalism was coined to describe the ability of Pulitzer and Hearst to stoke up a war with Spain through “Sinking of the Maine” headlines.   

Summary:  There is a fault line that threatens all the central United States.  The nearest recorded epicenter was in southern Missouri, along the Mississippi river.  Earthquakes happen, and they vary in size.  St. Louis is built less sturdy than Los Angeles, which has earthquakes.  Conclusion: St. Louis should build all their buildings up to Los Angeles type codes.

I do take some simplifying liberties with this article, which overall, I thought was a good case study of the argument, even if I don’t understand why this is such a hot topic now.

There were two 4.1 and 4.3 quakes in February and May respectively in Southern Missouri.  Beyond this, it just seems like news is a business of provoking people’s fears.  The main story in today’s paper is about the threat of industrial zones, playing on people’s tendency toward fallacy namely, a propane plant blew up in St. Louis, and therefore all industrial zones have a tendency to blow up.  

The problem with retrofitting and making building codes higher is dealt with in the article.  The section begins with the all too common phrase “There is no such thing as a free lunch.”  Mr. Hand cites the fact that money spent on extra concrete is money that could be spent on Policemen.  He also points out that St. Louis has one-tenth the risk level of Los Angeles, and would in some way be justified to spend less than LA on a per capita basis, building things like 20-year ball clubs up to a 2,500 year international building code.  

Mr. Hand gives us this dichotomy:  “Precautionary or coolly utilitarian”

I, personally, hate dichotomies.  They are simplifications useful in theory, but create terrible results when repeated as fact.  I also react to the use of the word – “coolly” which seems to suggest that utilitarianism is the lesser of the prudent virtues described here.  That somehow planning for a 8-point Richter-scale earthquake is justified in aims of being prudent, while using cost-benefit calculus is the think only a theoretician would do.  Mr. Hand gives us “Developers are fighting it tooth and nail, the almighty dollar is driving everything!” (in the mouth of a construction consultant in St. Louis, Mike Griffen).  My reaction is that the almighty dollar SHOULD drive everything.

Again, Mr. Hand contradicts this without drawing the specific comparison.  He tells us that Budweiser has made the investment to make its building quake proof.  This makes sense only if they think that the risk is sufficient to justify the cost (not to mention they did it without government command).  This reality exists without raising the building code.  I get back to my example from Mr. Hand’s article where he talks about the baseball stadium.  He tells us that the stadium is not built up to the highest letter of the code (he leaves this hanging, so we assume that he suggests it should).  The picture I have in my mind is the whole of St. Louis collapsed around the functioning structure of a baseball stadium, where the construction (rebuilding the city) stops each day for us to watch a baseball game.  What planet does this make economic sense on?  Even in a perfect world, baseball stadiums last 20-40 years, therefore please justify the cost compared to the geological time period calculated risk.  An earthquake of the magnitude to do the damage they speak of is not likely to happen but four times in the last 6,000 years.  Do the quick and dirty cost benefit, and see if the extra money is worth it for that risk.

Like I said, Mr. Hand presents both sides of the story, but in an article meant for Sunday July 3^rd readership, it seems we would have had time to present the economic side of the argument a little more clearly.  The yellow journalistic part of this sells papers, sure, but it leaves the public in general with misinformation about the roles of economic cost benefit analysis in deciding city planning.  Leave these decisions to the private corporations, when the earthquake hits, feel confident in that at least your supply of beer will be safe, even if you don’t have a baseball park to go to.