The San Luis Obispo County Courthouse — a building hundreds of people enter every day for work or to conduct business — is seismically unsafe and presents a "substantial" risk for loss of life in the event of a major earthquake, a new report says.
The state has been slow to address needed repairs to the buildings, even though residents have been paying fees and fines that go into a fund for construction costs, because the money was used to cover other state expenses during the recession.
The courthouse in downtown San Luis Obispo is used by about 1,200 people a day, according to courthouse staff. Owned by the county but the responsibility of the state, the facility is really two buildings with two different safety ratings.
The building on Palm Street that was built in the early 1960s is identified as a "moderate risk" in an earthquake. The building on Monterey Street that was built in the early 1980s is the side identified as "high risk." A spokesman with the Judicial Council confirmed the location with the author of the report.
This Courthouse Annex was built in the 1960s and has a different level of concern in the event of an earthquake than a portion built in the 80s, a report says.
All the court activity — civil, criminal, traffic and family court — takes place in the "high risk" side of the building. About 80 people work there and an average of 43 inmates, whose mobility is limited by shackles, are shuttled from the County Jail to stand before a judge each day.
The 44 buildings across the state that architects identified as "high risk" rated between a one and 10 on a seismic risk rating. The higher the number, the higher the risk. The San Luis Obispo Courthouse was rated 3.1.
It could be worse. The report identifies 12 structures as "very high risk." One building in Los Angeles County was rated 44.2.
"There are courthouses in every area of the state that are seismically insufficient," Judge Brad R. Hill, chair of Court Facilities Advisory Committee, said during the May 17 meeting.
The study looked at potential damage that would happen in a rare, large earthquake using current earthquake models from FEMA. It's based on a seismic event with a once-in-a-thousand-year chance of occurring in that particular location — a magnitude 7.9 earthquake on the San Andreas fault is one of the dominant contributors to the rating.
When the report was presented, Hill said the ratings were an "extremely important factor when trying to figure out which facilities should precede (with renovations)."
Some courthouses have been replaced in recent years, including one in Yuba City and another in San Diego, but moving construction forward on others has been slow because there simply isn't the money.
Millions of dollars collected through court fines and fees from San Luis Obispo residents have gone to a state court facilities fund, yet the state isn't allocating money to make the building safe. According to the Judicial Council of California, the problems won't be fixed until legislators return $1.4 billion that was swiped from the court facilities fund to help balance the state budget through the Great Recession.
It would cost between $17 million and $22 million to fix the San Luis Obispo County Courthouse, and between $1.6 billion and $2 billion to retrofit all the buildings that were found to be "very high" or "high risk."
"Court-user fees and fines went into the courthouse construction fund to replace deficient buildings. That's what people thought their money was going for, and we hope that someday that's where it will go," Hill said.
He said he was hopeful that the revised state budget released in May would do that. It didn't.
"We understand that when the money was taken from the court facilities funds — the serious nature of the state's finances. We were happy to help. Now, the budget is balanced," Hill said. "Now is the time for the legislature to return the money."
Investigating Past Earthquakes to Inform the Future
Exposure of the San Andreas Fault in a trench. The horizontal colored lines highlight different layers of sediment. The red line is traced on a fault that offsets the layers. (Kate Scharer, USGS)
Maybe you've heard that the "Big One is overdue" on the San Andreas Fault. No one can predict earthquakes, so what does the science really say? Where does the information come from? And what does it mean?
Earth scientists have been gathering data at key paleoseismic sites along sections of the San Andreas Fault to figure out the past timeline of earthquakes at each spot. The data show that at many places along the San Andreas Fault, we have gone past the average time between large earthquakes. Since we have exceeded the average, many people use the term "overdue," but it's more complicated than that. First, let's zoom out and look at the big picture.
Scientists have a good big picture understanding of the San Andreas Fault Zone (SAFZ). The SAFZ started moving about 28-30 million years ago, and has horizontally slipped (transform motion) a total of about 300-350 km (186-220 mi) since it began moving. The SAFZ is the main part of the boundary between the Pacific tectonic plate on the west side and the North American plate on the east side. The "zone" part of the name means it's a system with a main fault and many sub-parallel faults that all together take up the motion between the two plates. In northern California, the zone includes the Hayward, Calaveras, as well as the Northern San Andreas and other faults, and in southern California, the zone is even wider, encompassing the Southern San Andreas, the San Jacinto, and other faults in the Los Angeles area.
The relative motion between these two tectonic plates is 50 mm/yr (about 2 inches/yr), but that rate is distributed across all the faults that are part of the SAFZ. The faults are boundaries between blocks, and each block is constantly moving, which we can see by analyzing GPS (Global Positioning System) data. However, the edges of the blocks, the faults themselves, are stuck and only move where there is a large earthquake (some faults creep a little bit, but most are locked). An earthquake occurs when the stress from the force of the moving plate overcomes the friction causing the plate boundary edges, the fault, to stick. The stuck section slips, and the edge of each block catches up to the rest of the plate. The plate is moving slowly all the time, but the edges move in fits and starts.
Many of the sites paleoseismologists have been studying are along key sections of the SAFZ where there is a large population or major infrastructure that would be affected by a large earthquake in the future. Let's start in southern California and work our way north.
Southern California
Map of faults in southern California. Bold numbers show the average time between big earthquakes, determined at paleoseismic sites (triangles). Thick red lines show the extent of historic ruptures. (Kate Scharer, USGS)
There are only two large known historic earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault in southern CA, the most recent in 1857, and before that one in 1812. With about 45 years between the historic earthquakes but about 160 years since the last one, it is clear that the fault does not behave like a clock with a regular beat. Historic information doesn't provide enough data to establish whether or not there is a pattern in the timing of earthquakes, but paleoseismology has provided an abundance of data.
Along the southernmost San Andreas, from Palm Springs to the Salton Sea, earthquakes happen infrequently, about every 200-300 years. The most recent earthquake occurred during the time of Spanish exploration, about 300 years ago, but there is no historic record of the event. Instead, radiocarbon dating provides the age of the most recent earthquake and six more that occurred since about 800 A.D.
A paleoseismology site in Wrightwood, CA has been studied by several scientists, and recently (in 2010) the detailed data from multiple studies were joined together to create a single timeline. The resulting 3000-year record includes 29 surface-rupturing earthquakes. Careful analysis of the age of the earthquakes, including the uncertainties in radiocarbon dating (see Determining the Age of a Paleoearthquake in Introduction to Paleoseismology), showed that the average time between earthquakes is about 100 years.
The recurrence intervals (times between earthquakes) at Wrightwood are more regular than clustered (determined by a mathematical analysis), and only four times in the past has the interval between two major earthquakes been longer than the current interval (since 1857). The results of this study indicate that this section of the San Andreas Fault is likely to have a large earthquake in the not-too-distant future.
About 100 km to the northwest along the fault another site at Frazier Mountain has been investigated. At that location, the record is about 1000 years long, and in that time period there are about 9 large earthquakes recorded in the sediments, including the 1857 rupture.
Comparing the data from sites like Wrightwood and Frazier Mountain, earthquake scientists are working to understand the pattern of large earthquakes – asking questions such as how typical was the large (M7.9) earthquake in 1857? Or is the size of the 1812 earthquake (~M7.1) more common? Note that because the magnitude scale is a log scale, there is about a 25-fold difference in the energy released by these different earthquakes.
Northern California
Map of faults in northern California. Bold numbers show the average time between big earthquakes, determined at paleoseismic sites (triangles). Thick red lines show the extent of historic ruptures. (Kate Scharer, USGS)
The Hayward fault in the San Francisco Bay area runs through a densely-populated area, so it has been studied quite a bit. The most recent major earthquake on this fault was approximately M6.9 and occurred in 1868. The fault has been creeping about 4.6 mm/yr (0.2 inches/yr) for the last several decades, but that is only half of the long-term slip rate, so stress is building up on this fault. A paleoseismic study in 2007 at Tyson's Lagoon (now a BART station) found evidence for 12 paleoearthquakes (including the historical 1868 earthquake) with an average time between earthquakes of about 160 years. The average time interval between the 5 most recent earthquakes is a little shorter, about 140 years. The study concluded that there is 33% likelihood of a surface-rupturing earthquake within the next 30 years. (See Earthquake Outlook for the San Francisco Bay Region 2014—2043).
The Maacama fault is the northward continuation of the Hayward-Rodgers Creek fault system in northern California. In 2014, a paleoseismology site at Hael Creek on the Maacama fault reiterated the results found on the Hayward fault to the south – creeping with infrequent large earthquakes, and a large one expected in the not-too-distant future.
The Hazel Dell site near Corralitos, CA was trenched in 2013 to characterize the Santa Cruz Mountains section of the San Andreas Fault. The Santa Cruz section stretches 62 km (39 mi) from Los Gatos (near San Jose) to San Juan Bautista, CA and was last ruptured in the famous 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Observations in the trenches along with radiocarbon dating of charcoal, wood chips, and small plant remains, combined with a reevaluation of three previously-studied nearby paleoseismic sites revealed a variation in seismic activity in the past. Three earthquakes occurred within a 70-year period between 1838 and 1906, but there were no earthquakes during the 500 years before that, and there have been no earthquakes in the 110 years since 1906.
This shows that the average time between earthquakes includes some intervals that are short and some intervals that are long. New studies farther to the northwest along the Peninsula section of the San Andreas Fault also show a long interval between the 1906 earthquake and the previous earthquake, which occurred around 1300. Prior to 1300 the intervals are shorter, about 200 years. The North Coast section of the San Andreas Fault is north of San Francisco. Studies of this section of the fault suggest an average recurrence interval of 200-300 years.
Now What?
The paleoseismic data on different parts of the San Andreas Fault Zone are all telling us that some sections appear to be past the average, or "overdue" for a significant earthquake. But the data can't be used to make predictions: we do not understand earthquakes well enough to know exactly where the next earthquake will occur, what the magnitude will be, or exactly when it will happen.
Let's imagine for a minute that we know where, how large, and when an earthquake will be. You might think that would be good because then you could leave the area beforehand and then return after the earthquake. But focusing only on avoiding an earthquake doesn't address most of the effects from the shaking. As you returned to your home, you would probably see damaged and collapsed buildings and bridges, broken pipes and snapped power lines, and scorched remains of fires. Upon entering your house, you would stumble over toppled bookcases, broken glass from mirrors no longer on the walls, and the contents of kitchen cabinets in piles on the floor.
What we do know is that California is "earthquake country" and we need to be prepared. In particular, we need to design buildings and infrastructure to be able to withstand the earthquake shaking or be easily repaired. Scientists are working to improve forecasts that estimate how often future earthquakes will occur and how much the ground will shake so engineers and planners will know where to focus efforts to mitigate the effects of damaging earthquakes. Using the forecasts, we can properly engineer structures, plan for earthquake response, and be prepared at home to make a big difference in the impact of a significant earthquake.
-written by Lisa Wald, Kate Scharer, and Carol Prentice, U.S. Geological Survey
San Diego faces heightened risk of major earthquakes, studies say
By Gary Robbins and Rong-Gong Lin II | Los Angeles Times
New research released this week found that a fault under the heart of San Diego can produce stronger and more frequent earthquakes than previously thought.
It's the second study in recent months pointing to heightened quake risks in the San Diego area.
Here is a breakdown:
This map of earthquake faults shows the general route of the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon fault system, which extends from San Diego along the coast to Huntington Beach, Long Beach and into the Westside of Los Angeles. (California Geological Survey / Google Maps)
ROSE CANYON FAULT
More, stronger quakes than previously believed
San Diego's Rose Canyon fault produces powerful earthquakes more frequently than once believed, according to researchers from San Diego State University.
SDSU scientists who studied the fault in Old Town determined that the system — which before about 1990 was thought to be inactive — generates a magnitude 6.5 to 6.8 earthquake about once every 700 years.
Seismologist Tom Rockwell said that earlier work indicated that such quakes occur every 1,000 to 1,500 years on the 40-mile-long fault, which extends from San Diego Bay, through Old Town and across Mission Valley, and up Rose Canyon through Mt. Soledad, to offshore at La Jolla.
The fault is known to extend as far north as Oceanside offshore.
"A powerful quake in the mid-to-upper 6s could cause liquefaction around San Diego and Mission bays and locally in Mission Valley, and cause the land to be offset across the fault, which would damage buildings," said Rockwell, one of California's most experienced seismologists.
The research team said they also found evidence at a dig site in Old Town that the strike-slip fault has produced at least two additional quakes in the magnitude 5.0 to 6.0 range in recent centuries— shaking referred to as background seismicity.
WHY L.A. SHOULD WORRY ABOUT SAN DIEGO'S ROSE CANYON FAULT
The prospect of a simultaneous earthquake from L.A. to San Diego
In March, scientists proved how San Diego's Rose Canyon should give residents of Los Angeles and Orange counties something to worry about.
Researchers said the discovery of missing links between earthquake faults shows how a magnitude 7.4 temblor could rupture virtually simultaneously underneath Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties.
Such an earthquake would be 30 times more powerful than the magnitude 6.4 Long Beach quake in 1933, which killed 120 people.
But to get to a 7.4, the earthquake would not only have to again rupture the Newport-Inglewood fault in Los Angeles and Orange counties. It would also have to jolt the Rose Canyon fault system, which runs all the way through downtown San Diego and hasn't ruptured since roughly 1650.
"These two fault zones are actually one continuous fault zone," Valerie Sahakian, the study's lead author, said earlier this year. Sahakian wrote the study while working on her doctorate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Sahakian is now a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
In the past, scientists reported gaps between the two fault systems of as much as 3 miles. But this study showed the gaps are actually less than 1¼ miles apart.
"That kind of characterizes it as one continuous fault zone, as opposed to two different, distinct fault systems," Sahakian said, making it far easier for an earthquake to keep shaking land as it races down a longer fault, widening the seismic reach of the temblor.
There had already been consensus among scientists over the last three decades that the fault systems were actually one, said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson, who was not involved with this study. "We now have real evidence that this is the case," Hauksson said.
The difficulty in proving it was caused by the location of the gap — under the Pacific Ocean between Newport Beach and La Jolla. Drawing a better map meant trying to figure out where the fault was underwater.
2009: Low pressure off the central California coast triggered bands of convection and numerous thunderstorms that produced over 1500 cloud to ground lightning strikes, gusty winds, and a few hail storms over Southern California. Hail up to one inch in diameter fell in Carmel Valley. Rainfall was very light in all areas. Strong winds felled a tree onto a passing vehicle in Big Bear Lake, crushing the car and killing the driver. Lightning struck and killed a woman in Fontana. Six were severely burned and injured when lightning struck a fence next to them in San Bernardino. Lightning struck a palm tree in San Marcos, which critically injured a man underneath. Apartments in Riverside were struck by lightning, starting a fire. About 70 small brush fires were started by lightning across the region.
1999: 2.4" of snow fell at Markleeville (Alpine Co.). . 1999: 4" of snow fell at Minden, NV, (W. NV) its all-time record one-day total for June.
1999: A cold late season storm that started on 6.2 and ended on this day brought the latest measurable snow on record to the mountains. 3" of snow was reported at Mt. Laguna and one inch at Wrightwood. During a period starting on this day and ending on 6.4 a waterspout was observed off Laguna Beach and a funnel cloud was observed one mile off San Clemente. The unseasonable cold so late in the season brought highs of only 42° F at Palomar Mountain and Mt. Laguna on this day.
1982: Palo Alto reported a low temperature of 40° F.
1971: It was 45° F in Borrego Springs, the lowest temperature on record for June.
1925: Daily precipitation records were set at both Fresno (0.14") and Bakersfield, a trace.
Source: NWS San Francisco/Monterey, Hanford, Reno, & San Diego
2009: A dust devil damaged several homes in East Las Vegas, NV.
1999: A thunderstorms dropped hail slightly less than 0.75" of an inch in diameter across northern portions of the city of Fresno, accumulating 2" deep in some areas. Nearby farm areas received $4.7 million damage to crops and blossoms on trees from the hail damage, with some areas seeing total losses. Heavy rain also fell with 0.6" of rain reported in just 15 minutes resulting in street and poor drainage flooding.
1999: A cold late season storm that started on this day and ended on 6.3 brought the latest measurable snow on record to the mountains. 3" of snow was reported at Mt. Laguna and one inch at Wrightwood.
1997: Highest minimum temperature records were set each day in San Diego for six consecutive days, starting on 5.28 and ending on this day.
1978: The high temperature in Needles, CA was 100° F. This began a record streak of 97 consecutive days with the high temperature reaching 100° F or hotter.
1970: The high temperature at Reno, NV, was 96° F.
1967: Downtown San Francisco received 1.34" of rain -- its greatest one day rainfall during the summer months.
1967: Late-season cool snap dipped the temperature at Edwards AFB down to 40° F.
1948: Two lightning bolts and heavy rains struck northern San Bernardino during a rare June thunderstorm. Streets in northern San Bernardino flooded.
Source: NWS San Francisco/Monterey, Hanford, Reno, Las Vegas, & San Diego
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2001: Gilroy reported a high temperature of 104° F.
1996: A man skydiving southwest of Las Vegas, NV, inadvertently crossed paths with a dust devil causing his parachute to collapse about 30 feet above the ground. The man died from injuries sustained in the resulting fall.
1991: It was 37° F overnight in San Luis Obispo, a record low for June.
1967: It was 24° F in Idyllwild and 28° F in Palomar Mountain, each the lowest temperature on record for June.
1955: It was 41° F overnight in Santa Barbara, a record low for June.
1953: Coolest high ever recorded in June in Bakersfield first recorded, 65° F (This record was tied on June 8, 1965).
1923: It was 38° F in Escondido, the lowest temperature on record for June.
1920: It was 36° F overnight in Santa Maria, a record low for June.
Source: NWS San Francisco/Monterey, Hanford, Las Vegas, & San Diego
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