Guest geologizing by David Middleton
Earthquake fault long thought dormant could devastate Los Angeles, researchers say
By DEBORAH NETBURNSTAFF WRITER
AUG. 31, 2019 9:42 AMScientists citing new research say an earthquake fault along the Los Angeles coast, previously believed to be dormant, is active and could cause a destructive 6.4 magnitude earthquake if it ruptured.
And if it linked with other faults, it could trigger an earthquake in the magnitude 7 range, according to a team of researchers from Harvard, USC and the U.S. Geological Survey.
The fault, known as the Wilmington Blind-Thrust fault, stretches for about 12.5 miles, running northwest from Huntington Beach, directly beneath the Los Angeles and Long Beach harbors, past the east side of the Palos Verdes Pensinula and out toward Santa Monica Bay.
Researchers have known for decades that the fault existed, but it was long thought to be dormant and therefore of no concern for the residents of Los Angeles.
[…]
Research published in 2017 found the fault may be even more dangerous than experts had believed, capable of producing more frequent destructive temblors than previously suggested by scientists.
LA Times
Amazingly, the LA Times article didn’t mention climate change… I thought everything in California was either caused or worsened by climate change… hmmm?
The new paper is pay-walled. The 2017 paper by the same group of authors was funded by the USGS and available. Their interpretation is that the Wilmington Blind‐Thrust Fault was reactivated within the past 571,000 years and is capable of triggering a 6.2 to 6.3 magnitude earthquake, with a recurrence frequency of 885 to 2,520 years.
It appears to be linked to other faults, which means we have less than 885 to 2,520 years to solve the earthquake crisis… Can we get a Green New Deal for this?
If I have to tell you when I’m being sarcastic, there was no point in being sarcastic.
“We need to do everything we can to start moving the climate in the right direction, but we also need to start moving our people to higher ground.”
Andrew Yang, passenger #23 in the 2020 Democrat candidate clown car
So… Andy… Where would you move “our people” to avoid this? Guam?
References
Wolfe, F. D., Dolan, J. F., Plesch, A., & Shaw, J. H. (2017, 08). “Activity and earthquake potential of the Wilmington blind thrust, Los Angeles, CA: The largest earthquake source not on current southern California hazard maps?”. Poster Presentation at 2017 SCEC Annual Meeting.
Wolfe, Franklin D., John H. Shaw, Andreas Plesch, Daniel J. Ponti, James F. Dolan, Mark R. Legg; “The Wilmington Blind‐Thrust Fault: An Active Concealed Earthquake Source beneath Los Angeles, California”. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America (2019) doi: https://doi.org/10.1785/0120180335
Well, here in sunny England they had to shut down the fracking because of the sheer (get it?) terror induced by a 2.2 earthquake. Roughly the equivalent of a ten ton truck driving down the road outside your house.
My son in Nagano, Japan experiences bigger quakes on a daily basis.
The Stupid, it burns.
We obviously need to spend the trillions earmarked for the non-existent climate crisis on building a giant surfboard under California so that when the big earthquake actually arrives, as one day it will, the people and buildings will just safely float off unharmed into the Pacific. This is clearly a much better use of money than the Green Woad Deal and at least presents a resolvable technical challenge.
It will also provide employment for geologists and engineers – climate hysterics not so much.
“The Seven Towers of Agamemnon treble!
Much is the discord in the latitude of Gemini.
When, when cry the Sirens of Doom and Love?”
Hey, am I the only one who hates it when the pilot of the plane you are on decides to fly UNDER the toppling skyscrapers?
And who the hell calls them “temblors” anyway?
I have never heard a single person say “It’s a temblor…get under the table!”
That’s only the very beginning of the apocalypse. All that nutrients stirred up would inundate the earth with phytoplankton and rob all the global warmening CO2 and we’d all freeze to death-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/this-volcanic-eruption-set-off-a-phytoplankton-bloom/ar-AAGUcVB
Doomed I tell ya we’re all doomed!
even if they get a really big quake, LA isn’t going to sink into the ocean. The west side of the San Andrea’s fault is moving north by north west at a very slow rate. In a couple of million years, LA will be a suburb of Anchorage, AK.
This isn’t the San Andreas. It’s a thrust fault. This one might eventually dump LA into the Pacific in a few million years… 😉
L. A. is already doomed by its government. It won’t exist by the time an earthquake hits.
There should be a documentary on it any time now, titled, “The Stinking of L.A.”
“…fault long thought dormant could devastate Los Angeles, researchers say …”
In an environment of a subduction zone with continent plates riding out over ocean basin plates(“thrusting”) and long slip faults paralleling the coast, why would anyone think an old fault should remain dormant? Heck, you can get new ones, too! The Andes and the Cordillera ranges formed by buckling up under the enormous, inexorable tectonic stresses born by these rocks as the Americas drifted westward. Some grad student has chosen this fault as a thesis project and in typical post normal trickery needs to hype it up for funds.
I thought the San Andreas was the one to worry about.
If you live on a tectonically unstable sliver of rocks heading for the Aleutians all faults are worrisome.