"We're witnessing creation in action" - 3 apartment buildings teeter in edge of cliff in Northern CA

[Liberal_in_LA]

Pictures at link

Spectators riveted as Pacifica buildings teeter

(01-24) 20:41 PST PACIFICA -- For sheer gothic spectacle, it's hard to top Pacifica's Esplanade Avenue.

Three apartment buildings teeter on the edge of a crumbling 80-foot cliff while storm-driven waves crash violently on the rocks below. Enormous cranes hover overhead as work crews frantically try to reinforce the sandy bluffs.

Meanwhile, the rain keeps coming. And with television cameras rolling, parts of Pacifica keep dissolving into the sea.

"We're witnessing creation in action," said Jim Scallon of San Mateo, one of the hundreds of gawkers who've flocked to a spot 15 miles south of San Francisco to watch the Pacific Ocean reclaim another chunk of the coastline.

"The ocean," he said, "is sculpting the shore, which it's done for millennia. We're just passengers."


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/25/BASN1BMVDQ.DTL#ixzz0deuOTEjU

[FSogol]

1. Creation? How about erosion? n/t

[Javaman]

2. Way to buzz kill the religious nuts with all that science-y stuff! LOL nt

[Hekate]

5. Erosion, aka "sculpting the coastline", is part of creation. The man's observations were scientific.

[Quantess]

10. Some people will see it as destruction.

Are you sure "creation" is a scientific term here?

[Hekate]

12. The volcano on the Big Island of Hawai'i is continually adding mass to the island, even as it...

... destroys whatever gets in its way. I was a child when Kapoho village was evacuated just before being buried by a lava flow. Some 20 years later I drove through that area and it was alive with ferns and bougainvillea.

Creation and destruction are joined in an endless cycle (seed to tree to rot to forest floor mulch) -- take that as scientific observation, Hindu religion, or Buddhist philosophy. California's plant ecology evolved to burn; the soil gets slippery when saturated and hills come down, taking whatever humans have built atop them along for the ride.

Hekate

[FSogol]

11. The coastline is already there. It is changing or (gasp) evolving thanks to erosion. n/t

[Hell Hath No Fury]

9. I didn't view his comment as particularly religious ---

Dude is using words like "milleniea" and there's no talk of God's punishment for lovin' the gays. :D

I took it to mean a creation of Nature -- "Mother Nature" is carving out a new cliff face -- that is truly "creation". And she always gets the last laugh!

[closeupready]

14. ROFL

Yeah, what a bummer truthiness is. :D

[Tailormyst]

15. I think you misunderstood what the person meant by creation

[aquart]

3. Yes, the owners should bear the cost of it.

But what a dimtwit place to build.

[Liberal_in_LA]

4. Those buildings were way back from the cliff when 1st built

[BrklynLiberal]

6. Mother Nature will eventually win out over man....

[dugaresa]

7. wow what a quote "would topple like Mother Tree in James Cameron's "Avatar.""

that comment in the article is just about as dumb.

it's erosion they teach the subject in elementary school.

[wickerwoman]

8. Boy does this guy miss the point:

"Work crews continued their effort to hold the cliff in place Sunday, as onlookers from throughout the Bay Area trampled through ice plant to see if 320, 330 and 340 Esplanade Ave. would topple like Mother Tree in James Cameron's "Avatar.""

[whatchamacallit]

13. Ha, de-creation (n/t(