Historic California Quake Released Surprising Energy
Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer
Date: 20 March 2013 Time: 02:49 PM ET

"The Owens Valley fault runs just east of the Alabama Hills. On March 26, 1872, around 2:10 a.m. local time, a massive earthquake on the fault shook the West from San Diego to Salt Lake City. The quake's energy was comparable to the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake on the San Andreas Fault, according to a 2008 study by the U.S. Geological Survey."

"Now, a new study of the historic quake reveals an intriguing difference between the two great temblors. The Owens Valley fault broke along 70 miles (113 kilometers) of fault, less than one-half to one-third of the sections ruptured by the San Andreas Fault's biggest earthquakes, said Colin Amos, a geologist at Western Washington University in Bellingham and lead study author."

"Despite its short length, the Owens Valley quake seemed to have very energetic shaking," Amos said. The findings appear in today's (March 20) issue of the journal Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America."

[link to www.livescience.com]


John Muir and the March 26, 1872, Owens Valley Earthquake

" At half-past two o'clock of a moonlit morning in March, I was awakened by a tremendous earthquake, and though I had never before enjoyed a storm of this sort, the strange thrilling motion could not be mistaken, and I ran out of my cabin, both glad and frightened, shouting, "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquake!" feeling sure I was going to learn something."

"The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, that I had to balance myself carefully in walking as if on the deck of a ship among waves"

"It was a calm moonlit night, and no sound was heard for the first minute or so [after the earthquake], save low, muffled, underground, bubbling rumblings, and the whispering and rustling of the agitated trees, as if Nature were holding her breath. Then, suddenly, out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle Rock on the south wall, about a half a mile up the Valley, gave way and I saw it falling in thousands of the great boulders I had so long been studying, pouring to the Valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime spectacle--an arc of glowing, passionate fire, fifteen hundred feet span, as true in form and as serene in beauty as a rainbow in the midst of the stupendous, roaring rockstorm."

[link to projects.crustal.ucsb.edu]

Some things you all need to know ..

13 Crazy Earthquake Facts
LiveScience Staff
Date: 09 March 2010 Time: 05:15 AM ET

San Francisco is moving toward Los Angeles at the rate of about 2 inches (5 cm) per year — the same pace as the growth of your fingernails — as the two sides of the San Andreas fault slip past one another ..

[link to www.livescience.com]

This means only one thing, some area of fault line is locked also that big EQ is inevitable and more time passes rupture will be grater or stronger also that time probably is already here or in this 2013 ..

Last big EQ around M 7.8 was April 18, 1906 ..

5 cm for year that's more 16 feet (5 meter) in 100 years, we had a EQ's on this fault line in last 107 years but not strong enough to release locked-hooked areas of plates, accurate calculation of next magnitude is difficult but think EQ will be around M 7.7 ..

A city in Chile moved 10 feet in the massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake Feb. 27, 2010. The rip in Earth's crust shifted the city of Concepción that much to the west ..