Oakland Geology

This tiny park is at East 12th Street and 13th Avenue, on a low rise next to a lot of activity. Between here and the water—Brooklyn Basin, the innermost part of Oakland Inner Harbor—run East 8th Street, I-880, Embarcadero Street, BART and the Southern Pacific rail line, plus I’m sure a number of underground power and water lines and what not. It’s a highly concentrated lifeline corridor. Across the way is the Coast Guard base on Government Island. In the distant left corner you can just see Alameda Island. Except for the hummock in the foreground, everything visible is made land, artificial fill, with a high water table. It was created more or less haphazardly starting a century ago, and under strong shaking an unknown proportion of this type of old fill is prone to liquefaction.

Past the left edge of this photo, a little buried creek valley running down 14th Avenue reaches the bay. It’s all filled in, too. All the crowded life lines I mentioned cross that creek bed. In the next big Hayward fault earthquake, this is a vulnerable spot.

I took this shot on 19 November 2008 during a walk I took the length of Oakland, from the San Leandro to the Ashby BART stations. Below is a view on a less moody day looking up from the point of the Point.

The topography in this part of town is subtle. The point is one edge of a gap in the Clinton terrace, where Brooklyn Creek has eroded a channel through it.

This entry was posted on 15 February 2009 at 3:46 pm and is filed under Earthquakes, Oakland geology views, Oakland streams and water. 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.