Early Sunday morning, a 6.0 Magnitude earthquake struck near Napa California lasting 10 to 20 seconds, sending 120 people to the hospital and damaging buildings, breaking water mains, disrupting power distribution, and breaking gas lines and causing fires. The earthquake was the largest to strike the Bay Area since the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. I will provide more info relevant to geoengineers in the coming days. If you find any interesting info, leave a comment, or email or tweet it to me (@geoprac). [Source: Read more at the LA Times. Image: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times]
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The Claremont Tunnel – Designed to Survive Fault Rupture on the Hayward Fault
The Claremont tunnel beneath the Berkeley Hills on the east side of Oakland is a water supply tunnel that serves over 800,000 customers in Richmond, Oakland, San Leandro and neighboring communities. One of the unique things about the tunnel is that it crosses the active Hayward Fault. Most of the time when you talk about designing for earthquakes you’re talking about designing to withstand the seismic forces. In this case, the designers needed the water transmission tunnel to withstand up to 7.5-ft of offset due to fault slip and still maintain a minimum level of service. (Photo credit: Sue Bednarz, Jacobs Associates, Inc. by way of Civil Engineering Magazine)
This post describes the relatively recent Claremont Tunnel Seismic Upgrade Project as reported in Civil Engineering Magazine (May 2008, v. 78, no. 5, pp 58-63, 96-97).