| The Textbook Earthquake | |
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Geologist in the fault
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Geologist in the fault
| The Textbook Earthquake | |
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You couldn't have picked a better time and place for an earthquake if you had tried—at quarter to 3 on a Sunday morning, in the middle of a huge Marine base in the middle of the desert. And just a couple hours away are the major universities and government research agencies of Los Angeles, the planet's greatest concentration of earthquake specialists.
So in the clear early morning of the 16th of October 1999, there were soldiers watching the epicenter in the Mojave Desert near Twentynine Palms, California, as the ground cracked open in a line more than 40 kilometers long. No civilians in the way, hardly any structures to fall, no power lines or freeways endangered. The area was already secured, entirely within the bounds of the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. The base newspaper reported little more than rattled nerves.
Within seconds, the seismographic networks of California and Nevada had recorded the rumbling, automatically derived the quake's vital statistics—a large event (magnitude 7.1), a location and depth—and posted notices on the Web.
Human scientists were awakened through their pagers. Most were surely awake already, as the ground shook noticeably throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
As the sun rose, Marines reconnoitered the base's back country as a helicopter swooped overhead with an officer photographing the scene. Those photos, hung on the Marine base Web site, were widely reproduced, a precious record of the pristine fault trace. The low sun made many subtle features of the desert surface stand out in relief.
Almost no serious damage was reported anywhere. No one was killed. The earthquake of 16 October produced only scientific data, a flood of it. See my Hector Mine quake page for more links.
Action out here!