Earthquakes and Southern Cal Water Problem

The Northridge 6.7 quake in 1994 cause many fire hydrants to run dry. This forced firefighters to use helicopters to smoother a major fire problem. In a doomsday situation of a 7.8 quake water could be cut off from the LA basin. The biggest quake was in 1857 and it measured 7.9 along the San Andreas Fault line. The fault line runs through along the San Gabriel Mountains at the south part of venue S in Palmdale crosses Hwy 14 and Sierra Hwy and runs through Quartz Hill. This is also is very close to the aqueduct. Los Angeles get 88% of its water from elsewhere via the aqueduct from the Colorado River, Owens Valley and the Sacramento River Delta. This water source cris-crosses the fault line 32 times. Experts have said that a major quake could cut off 22 million LA residences for months if not years. If a big one hit then is could damn the water flow and collapse concrete reinforcements cutting off some if not all of the pipes and water supply. This affects not only the LA basin but also Antelope Valley. Some of Southern California’s solutions have been to use electricity to pump the water over the mountains, reinforce the existing pipelines, building wider pipes, but each are very expensive and in some cases impractical. A new bond measures have been considered for taxpayers to fund a water-related seismic safety project.