Japan scene: 2011
Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge after Loma Prieta earthquake, 1989
WHEN THE EARTH MOVES
Common question: How can you live with those earthquakes out in California?
Common answer: Earthquakes happen once in a while. How can you live with those tornadoes/floods/hurricanes that come along every year?
Common rejoinder: At least you can see them coming.
We who dwell on the edge where great unseen plates of earth and rock shift and shrug and scrape and crack as they create their geologic narrative live atop one of creation’s living mysteries. It’s not always fun, and it’s always threatening, even though most of the time the threat is silent. I live a mile from the Hayward fault. It’s not famous like the San Andreas, the one that destroyed San Francisco in 1906, but it ripped off a big one in 1868 (perhaps 7.0) and is overdue to move again. Though, as the fictional midwesterner in the above conversation says, we can’t predict when it will break its 145-year slumber. All they can do is give us odds. 60% of something happening in the next 50 years. That’s sometime between today and 2061. Could it be time to leave town?
A short walk up the street from my house is a cliff, maybe twenty stories high. The views of San Francisco Bay from on top of the cliff are tremendous, and plenty of folks have paid small fortunes to inhabit the homes that line the brow of the hill. It’s said the property values up there have barely slipped at all during the temblor that has shaken the rest of the real estate market. However, that cliff marks the line of the fault that’s bound to shake like a wet sheet in the wind and do a Humpty-Dumpty number on all those palaces the next time the sleeping giant beneath us turns over in bed.
Proceeding south along the fault is a major freeway along which lie major hospitals, schools, homes, water and fuel lines, rail facilities, and a host of other artifacts of modern civilization. The same route was relatively unpopulated in 1868, so although everyone felt the tremor, damage and injuries were not so serious. This time, it will be different. Despite our constant retrofitting (freeway and BART bridges, buildings everywhere are under continual construction), earthquake drills in schools and neighborhoods (Most everyone has a kit of some sort, and the advice is to be prepared to be without any services for at least 72 hours) there are bound to be major disruptions. Take 1989.
Loma Prieta (see picture of the bay bridge above) happened 75 miles or so south of the bay area. They measured it at 7.0, and it virtually leveled the little towns in the area. You might recall that it because it happened just before the first game of the Giants-A’s World series and thus received world-wide media coverage as it occurred. Here are the things that happened in my family:
- 1)I was at work, engaged with my computer. I noted the shaking, figured it would stop soon. We’re used to this stuff, you see. But after a few seconds when my keyboard wouldn’t stay still, I figured maybe it was serious after all and climbed under my desk. I soon biked home at my wife’s urging (figured she was overreacting. I had work to do after all.), noted folks gathered and talking, but nothing particularly amiss. Turns out there was a lot amiss.
- 2)One of my stepdaughters was working in SF. She boarded a bus to come back the east bay. The bus turned around halfway there. Driver said the bridge had fallen. Pissed her off. Why would they say something like that? She ended up walking across the city in heels to a fr
WHEN THE EARTH MOVES
Monday, March 28, 2011
Japan scene: 2011
Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge after Loma Prieta earthquake, 1989
Common question: How can you live with those earthquakes out in California?
Common answer: Earthquakes happen once in a while. How can you live with those tornadoes/floods/hurricanes that come along every year?
Common rejoinder: At least you can see them coming.
We who dwell on the edge where great unseen plates of earth and rock shift and shrug and scrape and crack as they create their geologic narrative live atop one of creation’s living mysteries. It’s not always fun, and it’s always threatening, even though most of the time the threat is silent. I live a mile from the Hayward fault. It’s not famous like the San Andreas, the one that destroyed San Francisco in 1906, but it ripped off a big one in 1868 (perhaps 7.0) and is overdue to move again. Though, as the fictional midwesterner in the above conversation says, we can’t predict when it will break its 145-year slumber. All they can do is give us odds. 60% of something happening in the next 50 years. That’s sometime between today and 2061. Could it be time to leave town?
A short walk up the street from my house is a cliff, maybe twenty stories high. The views of San Francisco Bay from on top of the cliff are tremendous, and plenty of folks have paid small fortunes to inhabit the homes that line the brow of the hill. It’s said the property values up there have barely slipped at all during the temblor that has shaken the rest of the real estate market. However, that cliff marks the line of the fault that’s bound to shake like a wet sheet in the wind and do a Humpty-Dumpty number on all those palaces the next time the sleeping giant beneath us turns over in bed.
Proceeding south along the fault is a major freeway along which lie major hospitals, schools, homes, water and fuel lines, rail facilities, and a host of other artifacts of modern civilization. The same route was relatively unpopulated in 1868, so although everyone felt the tremor, damage and injuries were not so serious. This time, it will be different. Despite our constant retrofitting (freeway and BART bridges, buildings everywhere are under continual construction), earthquake drills in schools and neighborhoods (Most everyone has a kit of some sort, and the advice is to be prepared to be without any services for at least 72 hours) there are bound to be major disruptions. Take 1989.
Loma Prieta (see picture of the bay bridge above) happened 75 miles or so south of the bay area. They measured it at 7.0, and it virtually leveled the little towns in the area. You might recall that it because it happened just before the first game of the Giants-A’s World series and thus received world-wide media coverage as it occurred. Here are the things that happened in my family:
- 1)I was at work, engaged with my computer. I noted the shaking, figured it would stop soon. We’re used to this stuff, you see. But after a few seconds when my keyboard wouldn’t stay still, I figured maybe it was serious after all and climbed under my desk. I soon biked home at my wife’s urging (figured she was overreacting. I had work to do after all.), noted folks gathered and talking, but nothing particularly amiss. Turns out there was a lot amiss.
- 2)One of my stepdaughters was working in SF. She boarded a bus to come back the east bay. The bus turned around halfway there. Driver said the bridge had fallen. Pissed her off. Why would they say something like that? She ended up walking across the city in heels to a fr
WHEN THE EARTH MOVES
Monday, March 28, 2011
Japan scene: 2011
Oakland/San Francisco Bay Bridge after Loma Prieta earthquake, 1989
