The chaotic response to Hurricane Katrina stunned San Francisco Bay resident Nancy Davis Kho into renewing her personal earthquake plan. She also used a Google Earth map service to look up just where she lived relative to the "locked and loaded" Hayward Fault. She found it was at the end of her street. Between her home and her child's school.
"Just as the failure of the levees had been predicted, the notion of a magnitude 6.7 or stronger earthquake along one of the vein-like fault lines that run through our topography is a virtual certainty. We live with the knowledge that it's not if but when, and Katrina was a potent reminder."
She updated her neglected earthquake plan and emergency supplies and reflected on the importance of a personal preparation for a natural disaster in her free-lance piece for the San Francisco Chronicle, "No more head-in-the-sand act -- it may move / Katrina a wake-up call for those living in quake country" (April 15, 2006)
Find out where your house stands in relation to the Hayward Fault at: quake.wr.usgs.gov/research/geology/hf_map/GE_helicopter.htm.
More Northern California Earthquake Hazards information from USGS
Posted by dougsimpson at April 15, 2006 08:08 PM