McGillX | MCGATOCRT314-G000900_TCPT

PROF JOHN STIX: Now it's time to look at a case study. So let's look at the San Andreas fault system in
California. It's such a fascinating system.
So here we have the San Andreas extending from the north, from about here down
into the Gulf of California located right about here. So north of the Mendocino
Fracture Zone. This is where the San Andreas fault continues out into the ocean is
the Cascadia subduction zone, located right up here. And then, that transitions into
the San Andreas fault system, which runs through, essentially, most of California.
And you can see, it goes right through the City of San Francisco and, actually, to the
east of Los Angeles. So Los Angeles is not directly affected by the San Andreas
fault, although, it does, certainly, feel the effects of the San Andreas fault. And in
some places, the fault, the San Andreas fault is a single fault, but in other places, it's
splays out and forms a series of individual faults, so it becomes a fault system. And
this is very well expressed in San Francisco, where we have numerous fault
segments, quite a complicated fault system here, with some faults going offshore,
some faults cutting right through the city, the San Andreas fault proper cutting right
through the city right here, the Hayward Fault going through Oakland and Berkeley
here, and then some other faults farther to the east, inland to the east. So It's quite
a complicated situation in the City of San Francisco.
So here we see a wonderful picture of the offset of a stream caused by the San
Andreas fault. So the North American plate to the east is shown here. And this block
is moving downward relatively compared to the Pacific plate, the Pacific block, which
is moving up. And again, if you try to establish the sense of motion on the plate,
what you have to do is turn your head like that and look at the upper plate. You
always want to use the upper plate as your reference.
So if you do that, then you see that this is a right-lateral strike-slip fault. The North
American plate is moving right relative to the Pacific plate, or the Pacific plate is
moving right relative to the North American plate. This is a slightly difficult concept.
People sometimes have difficulty understanding the difference between a left-lateral
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strike-slip fault and a right-lateral strike-slip fault. So your reference is always the
upper plate, which way that is moving. If it's moving to the right, it's right-lateral
strike-slip fault.
OK, so after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, people realized that there was a
fault there, but they didn't fully understand that this was a strike-slip fault. It took
them a long time to understand that this was strike-slip horizontal motion, as
opposed to some sort of vertical motion as on a normal fault or a thrust fault, or a
reverse fault.
And when we look at the ages of the rocks on either side of the fault, we see that
they're displaced. So the older the rock, the more displacement. So the rocks that
are the oldest actually show the most displacement. So you can match the rocks up.
But today, they've been offset like that.
So Eocene rocks, which are around 37 to 58 million years old, they show the largest
offsets, up to 300 kilometers of offset along the San Andreas fault. So the San
Andreas fault has been active for a very long time.
In San Francisco, the 1906 earthquake was a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which
caused on the order of $400 million of damage at that time, in 1906 dollars. So let's
project that to today. How much would that be today? That would be probably on
the order of $100 billion or more. That is an incredible amount of money.
And other natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, such as Hurricane Sandy
have generated those types of losses. So were an earthquake of that magnitude to
occur today in San Francisco, I think those are the kinds of losses that we would
expect on an economic scale.
The number of killed in San Francisco during the 1906 earthquake was estimated at
700 people, but that was an underestimate. The officials at the time tried to
downplay the seriousness of the earthquake, because San Francisco was a rapidly
developing city at the time. So in all probability, there were several thousand people
that were killed by the earthquake in 1906.
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And this is a picture, then, from 1906, just after the earthquake occurred. It's a very
interesting photograph. You can see people standing in the streets, because they
don't want to be in their houses that have been damaged, for example. As you can
see, there is rubble from all the falling debris. And in the distance, you can see
billowing clouds. And that is a big fire that is actually moving up the street, causing
further destruction.
So a large part of the destruction was caused by the initial earthquake, but a large
part of the destruction was also caused by the subsequent fires in San Francisco.
And probably, the fires did as much damage as the earthquake, as the initial
earthquake did. And when earthquakes occur in urban settings, fire is a natural,
unfortunately, a natural result and can cause a lot of damage.
So when we look at the 1906 earthquake, let's put it in perspective in terms of the
history of earthquakes in Northern California. Here is the earthquake, here's the
1906 earthquake. And you can see that it's occurring at a relatively late stage and at
the end of a series of smaller earthquakes which had been occurring in Northern
California in the late 1800s. And then, you can see there was a couple of other
earthquakes here, but then, there was a period of seismic quiet, interrupted by only
a few earthquakes in the '70s and '80s.
Here's the Loma Prieta earthquake from 1989. And since then, the area has been
seismically quiet, which is probably not a good thing. Seismic stress has been
building in the crust, and there's a pretty good probability that there will be a
magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area in the next 10-20-30
years.
So we can look at some lessons that have been learned from the 1906 earthquake.
And we can look at some lessons which have not been learned from the 1906
earthquakes. So it seems like in Northern California, at least, large earthquakes can
be followed by periods, decades of seismic quiet.
So it's been pretty quiet since 1906. There was a few earthquakes since the '70s
and '80s, the Loma Prieta 1989 earthquake. But apart from that, it's been very, very
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quiet, compared to the mid to late 1800s.
The large earthquakes, the magnitude 7.8, 1906 type of events, appear to occur
fairly infrequently on the order of maybe several hundred years. But San Francisco
is probably most at risk from smaller earthquakes, magnitude 6 earthquakes,
magnitude 7 earthquakes, which can definitely be destructive. And so in the short
term, the next 10 years, the next 20 years, the next 30 years, the probability of one
of these events happening, occurring is pretty good. It's been estimated at higher
than 60%. So that's something definitely to think about.
So lessons not learned. So these are two topographic maps of the area near San
Francisco, the area of Pacifica. Here's the town of Pacifica on the Pacific Coast. And
these are topographic maps showing the amount of development that had occurred
in 1950 and then in 1980.
And so, if you look at the 1950 map, you can see that these areas, which are all
close to the San Andreas fault, are relatively undeveloped. They're grassland and
so forth, not very many houses. But you can see very clearly, by 1980, these areas
have been developed for residential use and so forth.
And so there's a lot of people living here with a lot of houses. And all of a sudden,
the risk has definitely changed from 1950 to 1980. In a microcosm, what's
happened here in San Francisco, happens in a lot of places. And in places that
have hazards, when this happens, the risk increases.
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