Oakland Geology

October 21 is the date of the 1868 Hayward earthquake. It was on the order of a magnitude 7 and caused widespread destruction plus a couple dozen deaths. Over the last 2000 years, the Hayward fault has had large earthquakes at an average of every 140 years, and this year marks 140 years since 1868. There will be a public gathering on the 21st, at the Mission San Jose, at 7:55 a.m., the time of the quake. (At least it wasn’t at 5:13 a.m. like the 1906 quake.)

Unfortunately the officials are making the same mistake the San Franciscans do, which is to ignore daylight saving time and time zones generally. In 1868, cities determined their time locally from astronomical noon (or used the time of a larger regional city), so the contemporary time must be adjusted for us to experience the setting of that earthquake at the correct time of day. I don’t happen to know if Hayward used San Francisco time in that year, or if both cities used Sacramento time. In 1906, California was on Pacific standard time year-round, and 5:13 a.m. on April 18 was nearly sunrise, but nowadays they observe the moment, in a ceremony at Lotta’s Fountain, in the dark of night an hour earlier.

Oh, the photo? It’s the little valley across the freeway north of the zoo, where Arroyo Viejo makes a right-hand jog as it crosses the Hayward fault. We’re looking across the fault from Calandria Avenue in early 2005. The hill on the far side is a shutter ridge, cruising north at a long-term rate of about half an inch a year, which it does in meter-sized jumps every couple centuries. (It moved in 1868.) The hill has a large covered reservoir on top of it, to the left of this photo; you could easily imagine it rupturing in a large quake. That doesn’t mean it will rupture, because it’s well engineered, but it’s easy to imagine it failing. In the middle is Holy Redeemer College.

This entry was posted on 20 October 2008 at 2:14 pm and is filed under Earthquakes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.