Hazardous Materials: Earthquake-Caused Incidents and Mitigation Approaches

This chapter deals with hazardous materials (HAZMAT) release due to earthquakes, and the mitigation of this problem. Reports of earthquake-caused damage have tended to focus primarily on structural collapse, and HAZMAT incidents that occur during earthquakes have been reported only when they have resulted in major conflagrations, such as the petroleum fires that followed the 1964 Niigata earthquake. This lack of recognition reflected society’s general lack of awareness of the importance of HAZMATrelated problems until recently, and it is noteworthy that the first paper on HAZMAT incidents that occurred during earthquakes was not presented until 1982 [Reitherman, 1982].