WrightwoodCalif.com Forum
Public Forums => Disaster Awareness & CERT => Topic started by: naturalist on Oct 28, 02, 03:16:42 AM
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I thought I should start a new thread on earthquakes since I started talking about the 1857 Fort Tejon Quake under "Pine Trees"!
Here is an interesting link:
http://www.seismo-watch.com/EQSERVICES/Newsletter/EQNEWS9612.html
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And here are two links with information about the 1857 Fort Tejon earthquake which ruptured right through the roots of the ancient pine/granary tree at the country club:
http://www.scecdc.scec.org/forttejo.html
http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~meltzner/tejon.html
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Here is a poem written after the 1857 Earthquake:
How awful is the thought of the wonders under
ground
Of the mystic changes wrought in the silent, dark
profound
-from the Santa Barbara Gazette, January 22, 1857
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naturalist,
I just so happen to have pictures of that the ancient pine/granary tree at Twin Lakes.
(http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/forumimg/twinlakestree2.JPG)
(http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/forumimg/twinlakestree1.JPG)
pinescent posted this site in the Pine Tree section and looks like it's appropriate here:
http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/trl/quakes/pool.html
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Of course you do!! Wow--great website with specific information about our "Earthquake Tree" but they call it the "Pool Tree." I guess it was the 1812 Earthquake that stopped its growth, not the 1857 one. That's even more impressive!
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For keeping track of current earthquakes in California
Recent Earthquakes in California and Nevada - Index Map
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/
I always go here to see if it was just me feeling things or the real deal.
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Thanks--I go to that site all the time after I feel a little tremor, and it usually really is an earthquake. Like this morning at 6:16 am--did anyone else feel it? It woke me up and I was afraid it was going to be bigger, but it was over and nothing was even swaying by the time I thought to look, so I doubted myself--then I looked it up and there was a 4.8 in Ludlow that folks felt in Victorville and San Bernardino, so I probably did feel it after all. I think my house is right on the rupture zone from the 1857 quake, according to a map I saw, so I think I feel them really well! I'm in for it if the "big one" hits while I live here! :o
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So, as a hopeful future resident, how concerned to I need to be, with the San Andreas running right through the center of town?
Born and raised in the Bay Area, with the San Andreas on the one side, and the Hayward Fault about 4 miles from where we currently live, I'm pretty prepared for the Big One already, but I know nothing about the geology of the southern reaches of the San Andreas fault.
Any ideas would be appreciated!
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Matt - moving from S.F. I am sure you will feel much safer here in Wrightwood. We have no double deck freeways or sky scrappers. Although a few of us locals do run around and say 'the sky is falling', earthquakes are not much to worry about if you are prepared by having food, water, bullets and nylons.
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Matt,
Check out this nifty site: ::)
http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs/latest.htm
rich,
Umm, nylons? ???
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Food, water, bullets, and nylons?
Guess I better go take an NRA gun safety course, which I was planning on doing anyway.
Nylons are always a good thing to have in trading with the indigenous peoples, I suppose. Or a wife who got a run in one, just prior to an evening out.
Thanks for the smiles, folks. We'll let you know when we get into town the next time.
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Nylons are pretty handy for a lot of things.
Thistle Feeders for the birds
Strainer/filter material
oh........I'm sorry...I'm in the wrong topic. ;)
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Rich--you are a twisted guy. I love it! The San Andreas Fault runs right through San Francisco, too, and like Rich said, Wrightwood is much safer having fewer people, no skyscrapers, etc. We also have several escape routes in the event of a post-earthquake fire. There now, feel better? Truthfully, I would rather be here than in a city in the event of any kind of emergency: earthquake, fire, debris flow, terrorist attack, nuclear accident... :-/
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I look at it this way. There are a lot of houses up here over 100yrs old or dern close to it, and if there still standing after all these years then I'm not fretting a thing. Wood homes are far superior than other homes when it comes to going with the flow.
Besides that, we all might end up with beach front property many years from now. ;)
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Actually, we have a few more things going for us over San Francisco. A lot of the damage there occured in areas down by the bay where they had liquifaction. This is where the motion of the tectonic plate you are riding on is amplified by the soggy ground, whipsawing your house back and forth. Here we are on solid mountain and are not subject to this effect.
True, but we do have sag ponds: Twin Lakes (or what's left of it as modified at the country club), Jackson Lake and Lost Lake are three sag ponds that formed along the San Andreas Fault --of course with the water problems we are having, if a sag pond formed on your property, it would be like striking it rich!! ("Up through the ground come a bubblin' crude... Clear gold, water that is, California tea...")
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I always plan my route to go by our sag ponds. I noticed the other day the pond it Palmdale was about 6 ft below it's normal water line. There is another sag pond in Valyarmo not all of us know about. It's on top of the ridge on your left as you cross bigrock creek heading towards Pearblossom.
On another note, it's not uncommon for a sag pond to pop up for a few years then go away. The one event that sticks in my mind is in Acton South down the 14 from Palmdale. A property owner there had a 2 acre lake pop up and visit for a few years. I creek of moderate flow ran from the pond until it disapeared back into the ground. I believe it was around 1985.
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Here's a link I thought was kinda interesting that has to do with that big quake that happened recently in Alaska.
http://www.aeic.alaska.edu/input/sigrun/sprunga2/northway/northway.html
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L.A. May Be in for a Shaky Future
The scientists studying San Andreas activity near Wrightwood dug a series of trenches across the fault, then pinpointed locations in the trench walls where major earthquakes had clearly ruptured the surface in past earthquakes. They analyzed the organic material that had been buried over time and used carbon dating to determine the age of each rupture.
Geologists are now working to extend the record of earthquakes at Wrightwood back an additional 2,500 years.
http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/ww1812quake.html
;)
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One of my friends lives in a house that sits right on top of the San Andreas Fault. For those of you who don't know, the San Andreas Fault was made when the North American Plate moved over the Pacific Plate and split the continent in two. San Francisco, L.A and San Diego are all on the Pacific Plate portion of California. San Bernardino, Oakland, Indio, and Riverside are all on the North American plate side of California. Disturbingly Wrightwood is split in two by the San Andreas Fault Now scientists say that within a period of 50 million years the San Andreas will move north and Los Angeles will replace San Francisco as the neighbor to Oakland in aboujt 20 million years in about 35 million San Diego in 37 Tijuana and in about 50 million years the Pacific Plate portion of North America will completely split off from the North American part of California and move up towards Alaska. Just thought you might want to know.
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Please, won't you help stop Plate Tectonics? Send your check or money order to....
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Please, won't you help stop Plate Tectonics? Send your check or money order to....
No, thanks, not this time. I've already donated thousands of dollars to the Whittier Narrows "event".
;D ;D ;D
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Thanks for the input, I had a basic idea about where the San Andreas Fault was but didn't quite have it right about where it actually was, what I do know is that the San Andreas Fault is actually the line seperating the Pacific Plate from the North American Plate. In a couple of a million years L.A and San Francisco will be on the same landmass, the Sea of Cortez was actually formed from the moving away ol the Pacific and North American Pllates, at one time Baja California was connected to mainland Mexico and then the San Andreas Fault split and made the Sea of Cortez which is still widening today
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When the North American Plate overrode the East Pacific Rise in the miocene (or when was that--it's been a while since all my zillions of college geology classes!), all heck broke loose and the San Andreas Fault was born. What I love is looking at relief maps of the western US-- Nevada looks like it has stretch marks--and that's pretty much what the basin and range is! The East Pacific Rise (spreading center) goes right up the center of the Sea of Cortez, under the Salton Sea, and is under the continent in Nevada where there are basins and ranges and hot springs--high heat flow under the crust... I think it's interesting that when I visited the Yucca Mountain site for Nuclear Waste storage that they said how stable this area was, but it's over a spreading center! Of course, geologic time is long, but plutonium half life is too. But I don't want to get into politics here--just geology! Too many exclamation marks!!!! 8)
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Sorry, I get a little excited about geology... :o
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And have you seen the Discovery Channel's documentary on SUPERVOLCANOES?
That kept me sleepless for a few nights... :o
Until I convinced myself it was pointless to worry about it! 8)
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In my Geology class in Jr. College (and I won't say how long ago THAT was), we went over to Moss Beach, just after a good storm had washed away part of the beach.
There are some great tidepools there, and (at least according to my instructor), part of the reason was that Moss Beach is where the San Andreas goes into the water. You can see some parabolic curves in the rock, where the original layers of deposits have been squeezed together over time.
I vividly remember looking at a part of the (really small) cliff, which had been washed away, and seeing a vertical line between one side and another, which more-or-less lined up with the bottom of the curves in the tidepools a short distance away. We wondered at the time, whether we were seeing a manifestation of the San Andreas...
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We just went to Mammoth for the first time because our kid had a ski race there. It was a wonderful opportunity to explain why "smoke" was coming up from the ground. I had to phrase the explanation in 8-year-old terms. It was a way cool learning opportunity. ;D
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I'm not particularly concerned about living over the San Andreas fault -- earthquake faults number in the thousands throughout California, and any one of them could go at any time. And they do... I was living close by Whitter during the Whittier Narrows quake, and near Northridge during the '94 quake. I wasn't hurt but they scared me spitless.
Like the emergency people always say, be prepared to take care of yourself for quite while. Even in the large cities you never know -- after Northridge, a major water treatment plant was closed and much of the Valley and the Hollywood Hills had to travel to get drinking water.
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The first day of a class I was taking called ,"Natural Disasters", at UCI., we experienced the Whittier Quake at 7:37. The class began at 8:30. Needless to say the syllabus which began with volcanoes, was scrubbed. I am quite the student of seismologyand become "information central" when ther's any earth movement. Lucy Jones and Kate Hutton of the USGS are my idols.
The Dud
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Hey Matt Naas - where is Moss Beach? Sounds like an interesting look-see.
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Moss Beach and the Fitzgerald Marine Preserve are on the Northern California coast, about 10 miles north of Half Moon Bay, and 20 miles (or so) south of San Francisco. Our son was there this past school year, on a oceans field trip, and had a great time!
Now that I'm finally looking at a good map, I realize that we were nowhere near the San Andreas Fault "line", but west of it. The San Andreas trace goes into the ocean between SF and Pacifica. San Andreas Lakes and Crystal Springs Reservoirs are more in the valley that the fault created.
Kinda like Wrightwood!
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Calmast.org has maps showing many mountain community escape routes including escape from Wrightwood, Lytle Creek, San Bernardino Mountains, Crestline, Arrowhead, Big Bear and so on. Check it out! Signed, History (& esp. local geology) buff
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Has Anyone ever done a study of the hillsides around Wrightwood where the fault goes through. Just wondering how stable the hill is where the fault goes down Oriole Road.
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Here's a clickable fault map:
http://www.data.scec.org/faults/faultmap.html
And some other links that might interest you:
http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/ww1812quake.html
http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/forum/index.php/topic,3072.15.html
http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/earthq3/
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In one of the posts Wildman posted if your in the fault zone and your house is lost you will not be allowed to rebuild. Is that true, and if it is what do you do about the rest of the mortgage that the quake insurance doesn't cover?
http://www.wrightwoodcalif.com/forum/index.php/topic,3072.15.html
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Here's a great 14 meg video about the San Andreas Fault.
Wrightwood is mentioned in the video.
http://sceccore.usc.edu/movies/EQCLA/EQCLA_sanandreas.mp4