RDrancher
Veteran Member
Op here: My wife lived in Northridge thru the big one. She basically has PTSD over these quakes. It brings back to many bad memories for her. Her apartment was condemned and she was laid off from work while her retail job at the mall was being examined for structural stability. We both are long term okies, she moved out to Cali after she graduated from HS, after that quake she moved back. I never experienced a quake until 4 or 5 years ago, then bam!!! We have tons of quakes all the time. It is rare that we go for over a week with out having one 3.5 or so and up.
These quakes are not big in general, but the long term damage to the house is BAD. We have lots of sheetrock cracks and masonry cracks.
I am a very conservative thinking person, and really conflicted on how I feel about these quakes. For the longest time, the official line, was that these quakes had nothing to do with fracking/waste water injection. This has all changed in the last 6 months or so. OSU has released some studies that are now putting the blame on the waste water injection. I understand that the owners of the mineral rights, want to earn as much as they can, but we really need some guide lines to keep this vault stable.
This is a very difficult thing to accomplish in a state that is owned by the energy companies.
BTW, I do have quake insurance
Dave
I was a concrete / masonry contractor, living in the Santa Clarita area at the time of the Northridge quake. We had quite a bit of damage to our home, but some of the damage I saw while doing estimates for folks in areas with homes built on cut and fill lots was quite an eye opener. My worst memories of the whole thing are sitting for hours in traffic while traveling the five miles between the Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valley's with a Gatorade bottle at my side. And no...that bottle wasn't for drinking!