Research published this week has revealed that a toxic 300-square-mile lake may be a big reason why a major Southern California earthquake has been delayed.
Scientists say the Los Angeles basin could behave like a bathtub full of waves in the event of a major earthquake.Unlike the Bay Area, which has seen two major earthquakes in under 120 years, Los Angeles and the rest of Southern California are in a 300-year “seismic drought” that’s baffled scientists for years.
“It’s the weight of the lake on the Earth’s crust,” said Ryley G. Hill, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at San Diego State University’s geological sciences department and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, over the phone. “Imagine bending a ruler. You’re bending the upper crust, and this changes the stress in the area of the fault.”
The paper found that six of the past seven major earthquakes in Southern California over the last 1,000 years occurred when the ancient Lake Cahuilla, located where the Salton Sea is now, was either filling or at its fullest.David McNew/Getty Images The Salton Sea is an unusual place. It was formed accidentally, after a canal burst its banks in 1905, redirecting water from the Colorado River to the site of the ancient dry lake bed. In the ’50s and ’60s, it briefly became a vacation destination for Southern California residents, with a yacht club and hotel resort that saw lakeside performances from the Beach Boys and Frank Sinatra.
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