Posted on 03/25/2006 12:14:22 PM PST by blam
Fault East of Bay Area 'Locked and Loaded'
Saturday March 25, 2006 7:31 PM
By SCOTT LINDLAW
Associated Press Writer
HAYWARD, Calif. (AP) - New cracks appear in Elke DeMuynck's ceiling every few weeks, zigzagging across her living room, creeping toward the fireplace, veering down the wall. Month after month, year after year, she patches, paints and waits.
``It definitely lets you know your house is constantly shifting,'' DeMuynck said. So do the gate outside that swings uselessly 2 inches from its latch, the strange bulges in the street and the geology students who make pilgrimages to her cul-de-sac.
DeMuynck could throw her paint brush from her front stoop and hit the Hayward Fault, which geologists consider the most dangerous in the San Francisco Bay Area, if not the nation. Like others who live here, she gets by on a blend of denial, hope and humor.
It's the geologists, emergency planners and historians who seem to do most of the worrying, even in this year of heightened earthquake awareness for the 100th anniversary of San Francisco's Great Quake of April 18, 1906.
Several faults lurk beneath this region, including the San Andreas Fault on the west side of the Bay area, but geologists say the parallel Hayward on the Bay's east side is the most likely to snap next.
``It is locked and loaded and ready to fire at any time,'' said U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Tom Brocher.
The Hayward Fault runs through one of the country's most densely populated areas; experts say 2 million people live close enough to be strongly shaken by a big quake.
It slices the earth's crust along a 50-mile swath of suburbia east of San Francisco, from exclusive hilltop manors overlooking the bay to Hayward's humble flatlands...
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Those of us living north of Phoenix always chuckle when we see those dust storms on the news. ;-)
If they would let the people of California own guns, they could shoot the earthquake. :)
Imagine all the peeeeeople, living for today...ah ha ha.
LOL!!! Soon I will be the one speaking jibberish that know one else understands. Their was this janitorial lady at work who would be jabbering on in spanish even to us non-hispanics. We would just nod are heads and smile at her. She was real sweet though.
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