Something New to Worry About

I lived twenty-plus years in Sonoma County California, Santa Rosa, to be exact. As an emigrant from Oregon, I eventually realized that a crack in the wall or a sticking — and later unsticking — door was the normal. Earthquakes occur literally every day; most are felt only by scientific seismic equipment. In my two decades I felt only several. The most severe woke me early one morning in 2014. That one did most of its damage to the town of Napa, about thirty-five miles away.

Santa Rosa lies just east of the San Andreas Fault line (magnitude 7.6 in 1906 and) and right on top of the Hayward/Rodgers Creek Fault system (magnitude 5.6 and 5.7 in 1969). San Andreas follows the west — SanFrancisco — side of San Francisco Bay; Hayward/Rodgers Creek the east — Oakland — side of the Bay.

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Slip Sliding Away

The current occupant of the White House says that the fires burning in the West are simply the result of bad environmental laws and water wasted by letting rivers flow into the ocean. (Scientists disagree; they say it’s the changing climate.) But maybe the folks in Malibu want to agree with him. They might want less water in the ocean. Melting icebergs have already covered beaches and sand, and now the water is working on coastal cliffs. The U.S. Geological Survey projects are that by the end of this century, cliffs will have eroded as much as 130 feet inland. Much of the California coastline is already protected by sea walls, which have the unintended consequence of speeding up the loss of sand on the beaches.

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