Tag Archives: California

San Andreas wound tight; locked, loaded and ready to roll

San Andreas Fault sign

By Kami Klein

This year at the 2016 National Earthquake Conference, Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, spoke a warning;

“The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in his opening speech.

According to the L.A. Times, Scientists have observed that based on the movement of tectonic plates with the Pacific plate moving northwest of the North American plate, earthquakes should be relieving about 16 feet of accumulated plate movement every 100 years.  Yet the San Andreas fault, roughly 700 miles long and ten miles deep, has not relieved stress that has been building up for more than a century.  

In a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report, if there was a 7.8 earthquake it would probably cause more than 2,000 deaths, 50,000 injuries, $200 billion in damage, and severe, long-lasting disruption. These numbers could climb with each damaging aftershock.  

In information found on the San Andreas fault website, those who survive the immediate earthquake will find themselves in danger. The first thing they will need is water, but most water mains will probably have been broken. Utilities such as electricity, natural gas, gasoline, telephones, etc. will be interrupted for days, weeks or longer. Medical facilities will be jammed and unable to handle the casualties. Most people will not be able to get to the hospital because roads will be damaged. Banks will be closed, as will any organization that relies on the internet. Little, if any, food or medicine will reach the area, and radio/TV communications will be spotty at best. They recommend being prepared with all you would need to camp for two weeks.  Water, food, tents, etc.  

In an interesting web article from the LA Times, simulated maps and video show the incredible shaking, depth and length of a magnitude 8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault line.  

“Even though the San Andreas fault does not go directly into Los Angeles — it is 30 miles away from downtown — the city is expected to be heavily shaken by a large earthquake on that fault. For instance, simulations of a possible magnitude 7.8 quake on the San Andreas fault that begins at the Salton Sea and spreads west toward the San Gabriel mountains and show seismic shaking waves “bent into the Los Angeles area,” said Jordan.   

According to many scientists, several of the larger cities located on the fault line are susceptible to liquefaction which happens when certain kinds of water-laden soils are shaken and momentarily cease to be solid, becoming somewhat fluid-like, similar to pudding. Any structure on such soil like buildings or freeways tend to sink into the soil and tilt, sometimes toppling over completely.

 

U.S. Bullet train proposals shun public funds, favor private cash

China Railway High-speed Harmony bullet trains are seen at a high-speed train maintenance base in Wuhan

By Robin Respaut

(Reuters) – It took years of lawsuits and political battles for California to finally break ground last year on the nation’s first bullet train, which aims to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2029.

High-speed rail advocates had hoped the line, supported by more than $13 billion in state and federal money, would inspire similar government-financed projects. Instead, its many delays have left rail groups wary of accepting public funds for projects they are proposing in three other states.

Companies in Texas, Minnesota and Nevada all plan to tap private cash from investors globally, with help from foreign train makers and governments eager to export train technology. The projects would rely on partnerships with Japanese or Chinese firms that face saturated train markets at home.

“The United States is the Holy Grail of deployment for Japan, China, France, Germany and Spain,” said Tim Keith, Texas Central CEO.

California’s example shows that taking taxpayer money opens the door to political and legal challenges that can drag out planning, bidding and approvals for years, private rail advocates said. Companies now see a quicker – even cheaper – path by largely avoiding such headaches.

“All the rules relating to public engagement start the day you take public funding,” said Wendy Meadley, chief strategy officer for North American High Speed Rail Group’s project in Minnesota. With private financing, she said, opponents “can’t make thousands of public records requests and run the project over.”

The company said last year it would seek money from Chinese investors. Now, it said it is considering two foreign partners for the $4.2 billion project, which seeks to connect the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul to the internationally renowned Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, by 2022.

Texas Central is paying for engineering studies with $75 million from Texas investors, $40 million from a state-backed Japanese development fund and about $130 million in design work from two firms. The Dallas-to-Houston rail line is projected to cost $12 billion and be completed by 2021.

In Nevada, privately financed XpressWest plans to link Las Vegas to Southern California. Started by Las Vegas developer Marnell Companies, the company formed a joint venture last fall with a consortium of Chinese firms, infusing $100 million into the project expected to break ground as soon as this year.

XpressWest officials declined to comment.

GOVERNMENT JUMPSTART

Some experts remain skeptical that bullet trains can work without government money to finance initial legs of construction.

Rail lines are generally profitable once in operation, said Jim Steer, director of UK-based high-speed rail research organization Greengauge 21. But operating profits are unlikely to be enough to repay massive construction costs.

“No private party is actually going to stump up the kind of money needed to create these things,” said Steer.

Supporters of the new rail lines said investors can expect solid returns based on ticket sales and profits from high-end real estate developments near stations.

Current economic trends also make private financing for infrastructure projects easier to secure. Interest rates at historic lows have created global demand for stable, long-term investments, igniting interest in infrastructure projects from banks and major investors, such as pension funds.

The number of institutional investors in infrastructure, such as roads, airports and rail, more than doubled since 2011, according to Preqin, an alternative investments research firm.

“There’s a lot of money swimming around the world that doesn’t know where to go,” said Dr. Alexander Metcalf, president of TEMS, Inc., a transportation consulting firm. “We’ve seen huge increases in institutional money that is willing to go into transportation.”

Longstanding U.S. skepticism of expensive train projects does not necessarily extend to foreign investors, Meadley said.

“People outside of this country believe this will happen more than Americans believe this will happen,” she said.

POLITICAL PERILS

The U.S. is decades behind Europe and Asia in building fast trains.

In the early 1990s, French and German companies made plays to construct a high-speed network across Texas. But the project relied in part on taxpayer money, and the proposal collapsed when local political support waned.

Texas train officials now see private financing as the faster, cheaper – and only – avenue. If their project relied on public subsidies, “we’d end up pulling the plug,” said Robert Eckels, a director at Texas Central.

Project officials say they have avoided U.S. federal funding in part because it includes a requirement that American workers manufacture the trains – even though no such U.S. factory currently exists.

Since 2009, the government has spent $10 billion to improve passenger rail service in the U.S. California was the only recipient constructing a high-speed rail line, and the money will only go so far. The state will likely need private money to finance much of the project’s estimated $64 million cost.

State rail officials overseeing the California project, considered the most ambitious planned in the U.S. and the farthest along, say there’s growing interest from foreign governments and international firms to finance the second leg to Los Angeles.

In February, the state announced the opening of the train’s first leg, a 250-mile line from the rural Central Valley to Silicon Valley, would be pushed back by three years to 2025.

The progress has been measured in decades rather than years. California Governor Jerry Brown first signed legislation to study high-speed rail during a previous tenure in office – in 1982.

“Everything big runs into opposition,” Brown said at the rail line’s groundbreaking in January 2015.

(Additional reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai and Tim Kelly in Tokyo; Editing by Brian Thevenot)

FBI paid more than $1.3 million to break into San Bernardino iPhone

Apple Logo

By Julia Edwards

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said on Thursday the agency paid more to get into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters than he will make in the remaining seven years and four months he has in his job.

According to figures from the FBI and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Comey’s annual salary as of January 2015 was $183,300. Without a raise or bonus, Comey will make $1.34 million over the remainder of his job.

That suggests the FBI paid the largest ever publicized fee for a hacking job, easily surpassing the $1 million paid by U.S. information security company Zerodium to break into phones.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum in London, Comey was asked by a moderator how much the FBI paid for the software that eventually broke into the iPhone.

“A lot. More than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months for sure,” Comey said. “But it was, in my view, worth it.”

The Justice Department said in March it had unlocked the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone with the help of an unidentified third party and dropped its case against Apple Inc <AAPL.O>, ending a high-stakes legal clash but leaving the broader fight over encryption unresolved.

Comey said the FBI will be able to use software used on the San Bernardino phone on other 5C iPhones running IOS 9 software.

There are about 16 million 5C iPhones in use in the United States, according to estimates from research firm IHS Technology. Eighty-four percent of iOS devices overall are running iOS 9 software, according to Apple.

The FBI gained access to the iPhone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California on Dec. 2.

The case raised the debate over whether technology companies’ encryption technologies protect privacy or endanger the public by blocking law enforcement access to information.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards in Washington; additional reporting by Julia Love in San Francisco; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore)

California methane leak was biggest ever in U.S., scientists say

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The months-long natural gas leak that forced thousands of Los Angeles residents from their homes ranks as the largest known accidental methane release in U.S. history, equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of nearly 600,000 cars, scientists reported on Thursday.

At its peak, 60 tons per hour of natural gas was spewing from a ruptured underground pipeline at the Aliso Canyon storage field, effectively doubling the methane emissions of the entire Los Angeles metropolitan area, the researchers said.

Their study, published in the journal Science, represents the first comprehensive effort to quantify a gas leak that sickened scores of people and prompted the temporary relocation of more than 6,600 households from the northern Los Angeles community of Porter Ranch at the edge of the gas field.

From the time it was first detected on Oct. 23 until it was plugged earlier this month, the damaged injection well discharged a total of 97,100 tons – or 5 billion cubic feet (142 million cubic meters) – of methane to the environment, according to the study.

The chief component of natural gas and a far more potent greenhouse agent than carbon dioxide, methane persists in the atmosphere for 10 years. The total release from Aliso Canyon is equivalent to the annual energy-sector methane emissions of a medium-sized European Union country, the study said.

“Our finding means that the Aliso Canyon leak was the largest accidental release of methane in the history of the U.S.,” Tom Ryerson, a scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and co-lead of the study, said in a NOAA statement about the research.

The 2004 collapse of an underground gas storage facility in Texas actually expelled more natural gas, but it was mostly consumed in an explosion and fire, so that methane never reached the atmosphere, the study said.

“Aliso Canyon will have by far the largest climate impact” and will “substantially impact the state of California greenhouse gas emission targets for the year,” the study said.

In terms of its heat-trapping greenhouse potential, the volume of leaked methane was equivalent to putting 572,000 passenger cars on the road for a year, according to the scientists.

The Aliso Canyon facility, owned by Southern California Gas Co, a division of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, is the fourth largest gas storage field of its kind in the United States.

The volume of methane that escaped represents just 3 percent of its total storage capacity, “raising the possibility of substantial additional emissions” had the leak not been plugged or the field drained of remaining gas supplies, the study said.

Environmental groups have seized on the Aliso Canyon breach to call attention to hazards posed by the state’s aging fossil fuel infrastructure.

The leak also has triggered a wave of legal action. SoCal Gas has pleaded not guilty to criminal misdemeanor charges stemming from the release, which prosecutors said the utility failed to report in a timely manner. Local, state and regional authorities, as well as dozens of residents, have also sued the company.

The study was based on data collected from numerous airborne and ground-based measurements taken during the course of the blowout and analyzed by teams from NOAA, the California Energy Commission, two University of California campuses and the University of Colorado at Boulder.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by David Gregorio and Alistair Bell)

California, Minnesota Health Officials Warn of Norovirus Outbreaks

Public health officials in California and Minnesota are warning about norovirus outbreaks, cautioning that the intestinal disease could sicken lots of people in those states this winter.

The California Department of Public Health announced last week that there had been 32 confirmed outbreaks of the disease since October, a number that greatly exceeds the total reported in the same window last year. Hundreds likely fell ill from the disease, officials said.

In Minnesota, the state Department of Health cautioned that the arrival of a new strain of the disease could cause some additional norovirus illnesses this winter. The department said it has investigated at least 20 outbreaks of the GII.17 Kawasaki strain since September. The strain is the same one that spurred many outbreaks in Asia last winter, officials said in a news release.

“Every few years, a new strain of norovirus emerges and causes many illnesses,” Amy Saupe, a foodborne disease epidemiologist with the department, said in a statement. “We don’t know yet if this new strain will lead to an increase in the number of outbreaks reported, but it could.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), norovirus is the top cause of stomach flu in the United States. The highly contagious virus sickens between 19 million and 21 million people, hospitalizes 56,000 to 71,000 and kills between 570 and 800 every year. Common symptoms include fever, diarrhea and vomiting. Most people recover within 1 to 3 days.

People get norovirus from eating tainted food or touching contaminated surfaces, making it relatively easy for the disease to spread in places like schools, daycares and nursing homes.

The Boston Globe reported a sick employee came to a Chipotle restaurant in the city earlier this month and 136 people — including some Boston College students — fell ill. There were some initial fears that outbreak was linked to an E. Coli outbreak at Chipotle restaurants in nine states, but the paper reported health officials ultimately determined that norovirus was at fault.

The CDC and other public health officials say proper disinfection, hand hygiene and food-handling techniques are vitally important to help prevent norovirus from spreading.

“One of the most important things you can do to avoid norovirus and other illnesses this holiday season is to wash your hands frequently with soap and running water for at least 20 seconds,” Dr. Karen Smith, the director of the California Department of Public Health, said in a statement. “This is especially important after using the bathroom, changing diapers, and before preparing or eating food. Hand sanitizers are not effective against norovirus.”

California Hospital Warns 350 Newborns May Have Been Exposed to Tuberculosis

A California hospital is warning that about 350 infants might have been exposed to tuberculosis.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center in San Jose issued a news release Friday saying that a female employee who worked near the newborn nursery had been diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease.

The hospital said in the news release that it is contacting mothers who visited its Mother & Infant Care Center between mid-August and mid-November of this year. The hospital will screen them and their infants for tuberculosis and give them antibiotic medicine that kills the disease.

The hospital said its employee underwent an annual tuberculosis test in September and did not show any signs of the disease — including any symptoms. But when the employee later saw her doctor for an unrelated issue, the physician discovered the employee had in fact been infected.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), tuberculosis is transmitted when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks. Nearby people can breathe in the bacteria. If the bacteria multiplies enough, they can develop symptoms like a bloody cough and chest pain.

The CDC said tuberculosis was once the leading cause of death in the United States, but there were fewer than 10,000 reported cases of the disease in 2013. Tuberculosis usually affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body including the brain, kidneys and spine.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center said it placed the infected employee on leave to cut down the risk of exposing its patients, visitors and staff.

“While the risk of infection is low, the consequences of a tuberculosis infection in infants can be severe,” the hospital’s pediatrics chair, Dr. Stephen Harris, said in a statement. “That’s why we decided to do widespread testing and start preventative treatments for these infants as soon as possible.”

Study Finds Uranium Seeps into Two Major U.S. Aquifers

Researchers have found that about 2 million Americans in the Great Plains and central California are living close to sites that far exceed federal safety guidelines for uranium levels.

A recent study conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln found uranium levels in the High Plains and Central Valley aquifers, two of the country’s most significant sources of drinking water and irrigation, are far above thresholds set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The research showed that water in the High Plains aquifer, the largest in the United States, had uranium levels as high as 89 times the EPA-established standards. The water in California’s Central Valley aquifer, a source of irrigation for one of the country’s most important agricultural hubs, showed some uranium levels that were 180 times the guidelines set forth by the EPA.

Uranium is an element whose isotopes were famously used in the production of atomic bombs. Past studies have shown long-term exposure to water tainted by uranium can lead to high blood pressure and kidney damage, according to a news release accompanying the Nebraska study.

The researchers found the uranium contamination in most of the 275,000 water samples they collected was directly tied to nitrate, a more common water polluter that is found in chemical fertilizers and animal waste. The scientists say that nitrate interacts with the uranium that’s naturally present in the ground in a way that makes the material dissolve in groundwater.

About 78 percent of the contaminated sites had nitrates present, the study indicated. The researchers said the data indicated that the uranium levels weren’t predominantly the result of mining or any kind of nuclear fuel, but rather the reactions between nitrate and the element.

“It needs to be recognized that uranium is a widespread contaminant,” one of the Nebraska study’s researchers, Karrie Weber, said in a statement accompanying the research. “And we are creating this problem by producing a primary contaminant that leads to a secondary one.”

The researchers said that facilities to treat water can cost seven figures, which makes it hard for some smaller municipalities to buy them. And there are some people who receive their water from private wells and don’t tap into any kind of regulated municipal water system.

The Associated Press reported Monday that the uranium contamination has been so widely underreported that some people living in the affected areas didn’t even know it was an issue.

The news agency said it conducted its own tests on the private wells of five homes near Modesto, California, where officials spent $500,000 on upgrades to its water system that were designed to bring down uranium levels. The report indicated none of the homeowners knew uranium even had the potential to be a water pollutant, yet two of the five wells showed dangerous levels of it.

The High Plains aquifer supplies drinking and irrigation water to eight states from South Dakota to Texas, according to the Nebraska study. The Central Valley aquifer is a major water source for California and the state’s vital agriculture industry, which the state Department of Food and Agriculture said produces half of America’s domestically-grown fruits, nuts and vegetables. In all, the department said California growers and ranchers got $54 billion for last year’s products.

“When you start thinking about how much water is drawn from these aquifers, it’s substantial relative to anywhere else in the world,” Weber said in a statement. “These two aquifers are economically important — they play a significant role in feeding the nation — but they’re also important for health. What’s the point of having water if you can’t drink it or use it for irrigation?”

County employee Named Suspect in San Bernardino Killings

By Kami Klein

San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguen held a press conference late Wednesday night to identify the suspects in the shooting earlier today at Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, CA which caused the deaths of 14 people; 17 were injured.  The suspects killed in a shootout with police were identified as Syed Rizwan Farook (28) and Tashfeen Malik (27) .  According to a report by CBSN, the two had been married for two years and have a 6 month old daughter.  

The U.S. born Syed Rizwan was employed with San Bernardino County as an environmental specialist for the last five years.  He had attended a meeting/ party that has been an annual event for the county and reports were that he left angry.  It is still unclear what the disagreement was about or with whom.   

Chief Burguen says both law enforcement and the FBI feel that although first reports were that there were three suspects, they believe the two that went into the building were the same that were killed in the suspects car and the only shooters.

In an interview with his brother-in-law, CBSN reports that Sayed Riswan and Tashfeen  lived in the house in Redlands, CA that is now being investigated and belongs to his mother.  Syed is the name he went by for work and in public but the family called him Riswan.

Speaking on a motive for the case Police Chief Burgeun stated.

“We do not have a motive at this time.  We understand that when these kinds of things happen, information changes frequently at the beginning of the investigation.  We have not ruled out terrorism at this time.  But we do not yet know a motive.”   

In regards to the crime scenes, Chief Burgeun said that for the last couple of hours they have been working on the explosive devices that have been found.

“We feel that all explosives have been found and disposed of and are just now being able to get in there and process the evidence. Some degree of planning went into this attack.”

Both of the suspects had 223 assault rifles and semi automatic handguns in their possession when the gun battle with police took place.

Chief Burgeun concluded the press conference with a message for his community.  

“ We understand that you are scared and concerned but please understand that we are doing everything we can to keep people safe here. If we see a threat  we will be sure to communicate that to the community to protect you and your families.”

 

Strongest El Niño in 18 Years

The National Weather Service’s Climate prediction Center has announced that  El Niño is already is strong and mature and is forecasted to gain strength.  This El Niño is expected to be among the three strongest on record since 1950.

For drought ravaged California, that is very good news.  This strong  El Niño in the Pacific Ocean is becoming even more powerful, setting the stage for an unusually wet winter in California that could bring heavy rains by January,

El Niño is an anomalous, yet periodic, warming of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. For reasons still not well understood, every two to seven years, this patch of ocean warms for six to 18 months according to Weather.com.  

Generally, El Niño doesn’t peak in California until January, February and March, Bill Patzert, climatologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge said. That’s when Californians should expect “mudslides, heavy rainfall, one storm after another like a conveyor belt.”

Forecasters predict warmer temperatures in the North over the winter due to El Niño with more precipitation of snow and ice as well as possible tornadoes in the South and Midwest.   

Monday Storm Brings Rain, Snow, Mudslides, and Flash Flooding to California

California and other parts of the western United States – including Sierra, Nevada – saw the first winter-like storm of the season on Monday. the storm brought heavy rain and snow and even caused a 20 car pile up due to gusts of wind bringing up dust. Five people were minorly injured.

San Francisco saw an inch of rain and other Bay Area cities had an inch or more of rain thanks to the cold front from the Pacific Northwest. Traffic accidents and power outages were widespread across the region according to ABC News. Mudslides also blocked roads close to Livermore.

Mountain areas around Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada border reported a foot of snow. The Sierra Nevada mountain range had storm warnings for heavy snow from Kings Canyon to Yosemite that were in effect until late night hours. Areas above 9,000 feet saw 5 inches of snow by early evening, and snow levels were expected to fall to 5,000 feet.

Yolo, Lake, and Colusa counties were issued flash flood warnings according to the weather service.

The snow in Sierra could help with the drought that has hit California. California counts on snowpack to feed reservoirs. The storm also hit areas that were burned by wildfires earlier this year.