A Dangerous Place: California's Unsettling Future

by Marc Reisner (Author)

• New

  Hardcover
  2000

  $5.61

  One in two people living west of the 100th meridian in the United States resides in California. Crammed into the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin is a population greater than that of Texas. Both these drought-prone regions need to import water over seemingly improbably distances. Reliance on imported water, however, is not their Achilles heel; it is the fact that each sits astride one of the most violently active seismic zones in the world. This study chronicles the man-made eruption of development and progress over since the 1850s and a natural history of the subterranean upheavals that have threatened the human achievement. It concludes by describing in chillingly realistic detail the potential impact of an earthquake originating in the 60-mile Hayward Fault running from San Francisco to San Jose.