Next Big Quake? Maybe East of Bay Area

[tocqueville]

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
17 minutes ago

HAYWARD, Calif. - New cracks appear in Elke DeMuynck's ceiling every few weeks, zigzagging across her living room, creeping toward the fireplace, veering down the wall. Month after month, year after year, she patches, paints and waits.

"It definitely lets you know your house is constantly shifting," DeMuynck said. So do the gate outside that swings uselessly 2 1/2 inches from its latch, the strange bulges in the street and the geology students who make pilgrimages to her cul-de-sac.

DeMuynck could throw her paint brush from her front stoop and hit the Hayward Fault, which geologists consider the most dangerous in the San Francisco Bay Area, if not the nation. Like others who live here, she gets by on a blend of denial, hope and humor.

It's the geologists, emergency planners and historians who seem to do most of the worrying, even in this year of heightened earthquake awareness for the 100th anniversary of San Francisco's Great Quake of April 18, 1906.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060325/ap_on_re_us/life_on_the_fault

[niyad]

1. and. . . we live on the earthquake fault WHY?

[omega minimo]

2. How is Hayward "East of Bay Area"?

:shrug:

[demosincebirth]

4. You got me.

I went through downtown Hayward today and its still in the same place.

[omega minimo]

9. d'oh

:rofl:

[tocqueville]

5. seems east to me

[Mrs. Overall]

3. I lived directly on top of the Hayward fault, near the Stadium

in Berkeley in the mid 1980's. The house was old and wooden and the constant small earthquakes would feel as though someone had picked up the house slightly and put it back down. The house had made it through the 1906 quake and had been retro-fitted, so I never felt very afraid.

[fed-up]

6. 1906 quake was on San Andeas NOT Hayward Fault nt

[Odin2005]

7. Who builds a house right on a fault?

:wtf:

I'd move if I was that lady.

[tocqueville]

8. we all have our little faults nt

[soothsayer]

10. You should see how many US nuke reactors are built on faults

not to mention yucca mountain

[MemphisTiger]

13. However they have been designed to resist a major quake

or retrofitted.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. Hmm...

I wonder how many people will die, how much money will be spent to reconstruct, and how much economic damage will come when the Hayward goes and destroys tens of thousands of buildings that never should have been built in the first place.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. Book plug: Marc Reisner's "A Dangerous Place"

California's vulnerability to earthquakes, although internalized by its citizens as a dread of the Big One, seems to be virtually ignored as developers continue to build in all directions, even atop faults and landslide-prone mountains. This narrative by the late author combines a history of Los Angeles' and San Francisco's growth with a lurid scenario of what the San Francisco Bay Area will look like after the Pacific plate lurches northward a few feet. Reisner ends the book imagining a collapsed Bay Bridge; a destroyed Oakland and UC-Berkeley campus; a burning Richmond; and serial destruction of BART, highways, aqueducts, and airports. It is likely the author planned to write a like scenario for L.A.'s day of doom, but even so, Reisner's work of warning effectively reminds us of the vast infrastructure required to sustain these two megalopolises. As befits the author of Cadillac Desert (1986), Reisner highlights the vulnerability of water supplies, a point that will attract environmentalists to this work, as well as anyone who just likes a scary story. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Reisner points out that many of the "islands" in the Bay are actually below sea level, surrounded by dikes. Not a good idea in a quake-prone area, IMHO.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/B000C4T1ZY/ref=sib_dp_pt/104-4388366-4381537#reader-link