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[pct-l] Drought in Wrightwood
- Subject: [pct-l] Drought in Wrightwood
- From: Bighummel at aol.com (Bighummel@aol.com)
- Date: Wed Jun 30 17:03:33 2004
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