Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989...I
was working for Kaiser Hospitals in
their NOC on the 9th floor of a 21 story
building in downtown Oakland when the
earthquake hit...watched the Cypress
freeway collapse outside the office
window (horrible image)...at the time,
Kaiser had their own private microwave
network linking all their hospitals and
medical office buildings in Northern
California and we managed the network
from the NOC in Oakland.
Happy to say that none of the
microwave systems went down during/after
the earthquake. All we lost were T1s
coming in from PacBell (AT&T) (two
blocks over from their Oakland CO) that
were used for external timing. So we had
a few clock slips, but the network was
100% operational. Had to make it up to
Grizzly Peak at 3am to start the
generator as the power went off and that
site was on batter power, but the
microwave links were not affected.
You can't guarantee that an
earthquake or hurricane won't take out
links, but you can mitigate much of that
with implementing good designs with
contingencies and maintaining your
systems.
I don't have earthquake knowledge
but I do know that when the US bombed
the crap or of Iraq a huge amount O of
fiber was destroyed by the percussion
of the explosions. As a result all US
bases that I know of were rebuilt
using heavy rigid conduit. Cost the
fortunes.
I doubt there is any direct
correlation and I don't know if
extremely rigid conduit would
survive a quake better than anything
else. I saw a documentary on it
years back.
