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[pct-l] Drought in Wrightwood



In a message dated 6/30/2004 1:43:33 PM Pacific Daylight Time, rogers@isi.edu 
writes:
    FYI, the drought in Wrightwood, CA, has made it necessary to
truck water in to supply the town.  The local water company will drill
a new well this summer in hopes of increasing available supplies

Those Wrightwoodians are smart!  Drilling a new well where they are situated 
and removing water will increase the friction on the San Andreas fault, on 
which the town sits.  This just might save them from or at the very least 
postpone the effects of the "Big One" earthquake hitting their quaint, semi-mountain 
resort.

For any of you that might not be familiar with the "Big One" prediction, a 
UCLA grad student found a stream on the backside of the San Gabriels that was 
offset and pooled into a lagoon every time the San Andreas fault moved 
significantly.  He traced significant movements back thousands of years by carbon 
dating the sediments in the lagoon area.  He showed that this portion of the fault 
moved significantly every 150 years or so, plus or minus about 40 years.  
Thus, the last significant movement on that portion of the fault moved back in 
1842 (or thereabouts, I don't recall the specific year) and the fault ripped from 
just south of Bakersfield all of the way to Redlands in a massive earthquake 
postulated at upper 7's or low 8's magnitude.  This section of the San Andreas 
fault has not been shown to have moved at all in the time since.  Thus, in 
2004 we are in the window of historical significant movements.  

The state office of mines and geology put out an interesting paper a few 
years ago, titled something to the tune of, "Consequences on the Sth California 
Infrastructure of a Magnitude 8 Earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in the 
Palmdale Area".   It is rather scary.  

 I just hope that I happen to be on the PCT when it rips again!  It will be a 
grand site and an incredible event to witness out of doors where you are 
certain to be knocked off of your feet but unlikely to have much else happen to 
you unless you are unlucky enough to be under where a landslide is loosed or a 
boulder or a tree falls on you, or . . . 

Best regards,

Greg "Strider" Hummel