Disaster resilience

utah has a high risk of a major Earthquake disrupting the state’s economy and impacting the lives of millions. our challenge is to make utah resilient enough to survive, adapt, and eventually thrive following an earthquake.

The Potential Catastrophe

Utah’s natural climate and geography put it at a high risk of a major disaster disrupting the state’s economy and impacting the lives of millions.

FEMA has called the Wasatch Fault “one of the most probable catastrophic natural threat scenarios in the U.S.” The Wasatch Fault has a 43% chance of experiencing a 6.75 or greater magnitude earthquake in the next 50 years, and experts project that such an event would be among the deadliest disasters in U.S. history.

A major earthquake would also leave hundreds of thousands of Utahns without shelter while interrupting power, water, sewer, and road service for most of the population—potentially for months. When major natural disasters have occurred, many places in the world and in the U.S. have taken years, even decades, to recover—if they recover at all.

Now is the Right time to Become More Resilient

The Your Utah, Your Future effort told us more than anyone has ever known before about what Utahns want for the future of our state. Utahns want to substantially improve the state’s disaster resilience so they can feel safe, decrease stress, and reduce the likelihood that they or their children will have to move away from Utah if a disaster occurs and the economy suffers. They also want to be able to recover quickly and return to their normal lives.

The opportunity is ripe for an Envision Utah process due to the 2020 Magna earthquake, the 2022 National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Salt Lake City, and the 2023 Resilient Wasatch Initiative (FEMA Region VIII’s top priority). The four-year seismic upgrades to the Salt Lake City Temple also serve as a powerful symbol of recognizing the threat and acting. Envision Utah is facilitating and coordinating efforts across agencies to improve resilience so that the disaster impacts are less catastrophic to begin with.