We've had a couple of earthquakes today. No, no bullshit, genuine honest to goodness earthquakes right here in Oklahoma. Nothing terribly bad, high fours, low fives maybe, no damage here but definitely enough to get your attention. Thought I'd left those behind when we left California. I guess that's what you get for thinking.
I was there for the one in '71 that rumbled Los Angeles to a standstill for a couple of days. In the end I think they decided to call that one a 6.3 or so. Of course, those numbers are deceptive, they're on a log scale so a 6.3 would be like fifty times more powerful than a 4.9 or a five. That one tore up more than a few things. Got us a week out of school, almost got the school itself.
A month or so after the quake old man Raleigh snuck a few of us in where we weren't supposed to be to show us what had saved the school for us, to show us just how strong wood can really be. Awesome strong, in point of fact. Stronger than steel. The school was originally built in the 'twenties as two three story buildings sitting over full basements, concrete and steel construction with a brick veneer. But during the thirties, during the depression, the WPA added a large auditorium between the first two structures to create one "T" shaped building about four hundred feet long from what had been two. I know how long it was because me and my buddy Jay stepped it off trying to get a comparison to the main saucer hull of a Constitution class starship. The starship was bigger.
Anyway, it was a nice auditorium, dished out for theater seating, big stage, proper arched ceiling three stories above the floor. There were six huge laminated beams carrying the roof across what had to be at least an eighty foot jump, and it was those beams saved the structure. Mr. Raleigh had been there when the engineers first surveyed the building, told us both of the older structures had tried to collapse towards the middle, that the walls were something like six inches out of plumb after the quake. The roof was in ruins where those huge oak beams, each one was like two feet by three feet of solid laminated oak, had bowed up taking load, but they'd held. Held both buildings.
I remember feeling very small right then, thinking of how much force they'd carried. I remember feeling kind of spooked by the huge jackscrews they'd bolted across under each beam, big hunks of threaded metal they'd screwed out until the walls were again vertical. The jackscrews would never be taken out, they stayed on to reinforce the wood, made of soft iron designed to bend if they couldn't hold strait and reinforce the wood.
Up until that point I hadn't really been scared by the earthquake, not really. But looking up at those beams and the big rods and being told if the next one was no worse than the last one they might be able to hold again well, yes, that was scary, the thought of another one. Yea, that brought it home to me, that if nature loses her temper mankind don't stand a chance. Kind of makes a lot of other things look rather small by comparison.
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In postscript? This fracking bullshit has got to be brought to a halt, the habit of putting back dirty water (so very thin and prone to transmitting vibration) where there had once been crude oil (so very, very thick and prone to defeating vibration within its' own molecular structure). Is oil an important resource in the modern world? Of course it is. But... it isn't that important. I've got this distinct sense that mother nature has about had enough, and yea, when she loses her temper you really don't want to be on the same planet with her, much less sitting right on top of what pissed her off in the first place.
Yes, we've got to stop fracking with our future!
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