CompuServe Messages

Yes, it's just more of the usual panic. I thought the "what to do if the big one hits" spots on the local news were hilarious. My wife and I almost died laughing at them. I guess they're terrified in Columbia that they might get a really big one, like maybe 3.5…. There are two eastern faults that are really serious. Both run essentially east-west and go all the way to the continental edge in the mid-Atlantic. Those are trouble. One's in northern Quebec and can go to magnitude 7, the other is in and right through Charleston, SC, and it's been as mean as the other two of the Big Three–the San Andreas and New Madrid. We are not on a continental boundary here, and the faults we get are small and tend to be caused by new folding, as the plate is being pushed westward from the mid-Atlantic. The folding is quite slow and steady and so faults don't tend to be large, severe, or all that deep. The most famous fault in the area is the Chester Fault in eastern Pennsylvania, which goes off almost like clockwork with 2.5 to 3.2 quakes every few years but never anything more. The kind of slippage you have on a fault boundary such as the San Andreas or one so huge it extends to the continental boundary almost 1000 miles out in the ocean like Charleston is simply not likely here. Even in prehistoric times the geologic evidence shows slow extrusions not massive cracks and eruptions. But, then, we always used to crack that Columbia was Marin County East. Now we know that the Rouse Company meant that they were going to do it literally….