Christmas Rock

With the end of the year fast approaching I have realised that my geological musings have become less frequent, subsumed by the urgency of getting jobs done before Christmas.

Like so many years before, it feels like I, along with colleagues and friends, will be falling across the finish line once again. 

However, I will make a resolution to be more diligent in 2023.

Followers of the news might have heard that northern California was rocked by quite a large earthquake earlier this week.

In an area where such things occur regularly, this one apparently rattled both houses and nerves.

This was not “The Big One” they justifiably fear along the west coast of the US but no doubt there were some buff Hollywood stars ready to swoop in and save the day.

The tectonic forces that combine to cause earthquakes are awesome and hard for us to comprehend.

Their infrequency and unpredictability, other than occurring in a concentration within worldwide seismically active zones, allows us to generally ignore the danger.

I have lived in a couple of places where potentially devastating earthquakes can and do occur.

In the Philippines we felt plenty of small tremors and there was of course the risk of an associated tsunami.

A big quake, combined with dense populations and lax building standards, would have caused absolute mayhem.

I was totally unprepared for a disaster, which in hindsight was pretty dumb, considering they suffer regular typhoons and occasional volcanic eruptions too.

While living in New Zealand we were jolted awake late at night by a huge magnitude 7 quake off the coast of Fiordland, along the Alpine Fault.

New Zealand by contrast has a pretty well organised civil defence strategy and I was prepared with emergency supplies in the shed (assuming it didn’t collapse).

Nonetheless, having seen the devastation wrought by the Christchurch earthquake in 2010 I am glad I wasn’t around for that one.

Active fault lines that are the source of earthquakes do also make an impact on the landscape that we appreciate, perhaps unknowingly.

The majestic Southern Alps of New Zealand owe their existence to the Alpine Fault I mentioned earlier.

Even our much more modest Perth Hills are the result of ancient and ongoing uplift along the Darling Fault.

And make no mistake, this is a big fault – it stretches more than 1,000 km from the Gascoyne to the south coast near Windy Harbour.  It could certainly cause a major earthquake.

So maybe we should pay a bit more attention to the risk, even if it hasn’t happened for many years.  Not at Christmas though, I’m too busy …

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