Pacific plate: Chile today . . . California next?

[David Pinnegar]

Hi!

Will California be next?

Chile Earthquake Richter 5.3 this morning. http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/world/Chile+struck+earthquake/4452424/story.html

A 6 a month ago.

Clearly Pacific plate is on the move.

Although California's power stations have been built with earthquake in mind, Japan's American designed power stations have demonstrated vulnerability to loss of backup power. At this time, perhaps it would be sensible to bring in extra backup power capability . . . and if people don't need to be in the SF-LA area, perhaps it's a good time to take a holiday somewhere else . . .

This is not a prediction, simply commonsense that doesn't need rocket science nor experts to understand.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-12682145
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8370151/Mystery-over-millions-of-dead-fish-in-California-harbour.html

There's clearly a series of submarine crustal activity . . .

Best wishes

David P

[dragonser]

Hi,
I know that at some point there are going to be problems in California.
BUT I hope that it won't be for several years, so at least any lessons [ to do with the Nuclear power stations ] from the Horrible events in Japan can be learnt from.

regards Peter B

Hi!

Will California be next?



There's clearly a series of submarine crustal activity . . .

Best wishes

David P

[KB7DQH]

One is forgetting that the most powerful earthquakes generated on planet earth occur along the
Cascadia fault-- formed where the Juan de Fuca plate slides under the North American plate...
right under my feet.  :o

One such quake caused a devastating Tsunami which wrecked much of the eastern coast of the Japanese mainland--  puzzling Japanese historians and geologists alike... Big Tsunami, no earthquake?
This event coincided with what local indigenous people have mentioned in their oral history--
"Fishing was bad, then the earth-mother rearranged the coastline, then fishing was good".......

The 1964 quake up in Alaska has been the biggest recorded with "modern technology" at a magnitude 9....

In comparison those "little quakes" California gets "all the time"... although deadly and destructive...
are reasonably tame by comparison to what is expected here in the Pacific Northwest... Generally every 500 to 1500 years.  And according to the calendar, that means... any day now for the next hundred years or so.  Not a matter of if... but WHEN.

Recently an installation of a large number of GPS measurement equipment has shown that over a six month period the whole of Western Washington and Oregon move approximately 10 FEET North and East, and then slide back.  This amount of ground movement in a few seconds would constitute a significant earthquake, I forget what it would work out to in "Magnitude"... But it has been happening continuously for years now... but because it takes so long for a "cycle" to complete it is not "perceived" as an "earthquake"...  The Geologists if they spot a stopping of this movement, especially after a "compression" cycle, would likely "raise the alarm"...

The Flentrop organ built in 1965 in Seattle's Saint Mark's Episcopal Cathedral has had to be repaired twice because of damaged received in our "lesser" earthquakes we experience here on a fairly regular basis. 

I was in Japan in 1993 and sitting in the dayroom of a Navy barracks watching TV... and something like a Mag. 3 showed up...  Those who have not experienced an earthquake were completely "freaked" by the event.  Those of us who have experienced them merely "enjoyed the ride" but were looking around for appropriate building structures or furniture to "take cover" under should things get "interesting" ;D  At the time this was the most ground movement I had felt in an earthquake...  until the 7.9 Nisqually event that damaged our State Capitol building and was the "most expensive" earthquake in the history of the State...  For airplane buffs... Seattle Tacoma International airport was closed briefly as the brand-new ATC tower suffered extensive damage,
all the glass in the tower having shattered and fallen out of the windows... forcing the controllers to relocate...  Oddly enough, the ground movement some distance from the epicenter was typical of our "typical" Magnitude 3 events, but instead of lasting for a second or two this "kept going" for nearly a full minute. 

But differences in "local geology" had a great effect on the extent of damage to specific structures.
While I had something fall off the refrigerator in the kitchen, strike the floor and break, some stuff I had piled up had become unpiled... A vehicle supported by jackstands remained supported by the jackstands... My neighbor's house a couple hundred feet away and built on vastly different soil suffered extensive damage... Stuff in the house thrown 10 feet across the room, the chimney collapsing to below roof level... things like that.   The difference I am guessing between my case of
post-block foundation on glacially-compacted sand/gravel, and the neighbor's house with its dug-into the hillside, daylight-on-one-side basement and resting on clay...

Yes... The "Pacific Rim" is a dangerous place to live...

Eric
KB7DQH