Quote:
Originally Posted by SandyC
That's true Frank. I always wanted to live in Cali but I have nightmares of the big one hitting and one of two things happening. One, Cali breaks off and we are floating in our own land boat. Or two, the earth opening up and me falling through. I know both scenarios are absolute nonsense but I can't help my mind. lol
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not nonsense at all, honey!
the San Andreas fault is mostly along the coast, so it's just a SLIVER of Calif. coast that could actually break off, if there was a really *bad* quake.
it could fracture along a series of faults that lie along the place where the oceanic and continental tectonic plates meet... or at least, that's how my mom explained it to me.
I lived in California for 47 years, and my mother's Geology studies specialized in earthquakes.
been through quite a few, but not ever close to the epicenter of a BIG one, thankfully.
my solution to the fears of Calif breaking off was to move WAY up to the mountains, lol, beyond the reach of coastal quakes.
after the '89 Loma Prieta quake, (which we FELT, all the way up near Yosemite, a 3-hour drive east!!!) we couldn't reach family and friends in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, and Oakland... for many many scary hours.
on the earth swallowing you up, two things, first, that's the plot for one of L. Frank Baum's Oz stories -
see page three:
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/L_Fra...hquake_p1.html
read those stories as a small child, and whooooooo-eeeeee MAMA, that scared ME !!
gave me nightmares, really!
second, my mother had large photographs on our walls of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and there was one of Point Reyes... with a newspaper headline that certainly didn't help the nightmare factory!
apparently, so the story went, a COW got swallowed up when the earth cracked, shifted, and then closed.
our family went on a trip to visit
The Earthquake Trail at Point Reyes:
The Story of the Fallen Cow
Signs along the trail at Point Reyes also explain the legend of Matilda the cow, who was supposedly swallowed by the crack that opened up in the earth. After the quake caused ferocious fires 35 miles away in San Francisco, it took a few days for reporters to find their way to the sleepy hamlet of Olema. When they arrived, they were led to a gaping hole where Matilda lay upside down.
It was a good story, with headlines shouting, "Fault swallows cow whole." However, locals whispered that a farm boy was having fun with reporters from the big city. It seems that Matilda had died of natural causes and the hole seemed a convenient place to bury her.
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/wa...y/pt_reyes.htm
that was my first brush with an "Urban Myth"...
it's a good story, but... it ain't true!
