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New California Earthquake Fault

When people think about earthquakes in California, the San Andreas Fault comes to mind because that fault threatens major California metropolitan centers where millions of people live and work, and it is also the most famous local fault. A new extensive fault, however, has been found beneath metropolitan Los Angeles that is just as dangerous as the San Andreas Fault. Named the Puente Hills fault, a recent article in the Los Angeles Times (April 4, 2003) called this new fault ôa major threat.ö

The article pointed out that the Puente Hills system could cause a 7.5 temblor directly beneath downtown Los Angeles. This fault system, discovered in 1999, runs deep beneath the heart of Los Angeles, and the article states that it could cause the largest earthquake in the modern history of the Los Angeles Basin. Another point made is that the Puente Hills Fault has generated at least four large earthquakes in the past 11,000 years. The 5.9 Whittier Narrows earthquake of 1987 was generated by the Puente Hills Fault so this shows that the fault is an active one. The director of the Southern California Earthquake Center called the news about the Puente Hills Fault ôa worst-case scenario for L.A.ö Another authority is quoted as saying ôthis is the fault that could eat L.A.ö

The story discusses the safety of buildings, older and modern and makes the point that buildings were constructed to withstand a magnitude 5, not 7.5. All this information is presented in the first seven paragraphs of the article, and it is not until paragraph eight that the news is given that a major earthquake on the Puente Hills fault may not happen for thousands of years because such a large earthquake under a major city hardly ever happens. This is the good news that follows the bad news but if a 7.5 or larger earthquake on the Puente Hills fault is so rare, the article should have mentioned this fact sooner. On the one hand the article reads like sensationa...

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New California Earthquake Fault. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 12:38, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1701529.html