USGS 50 Years in Menlo Park

National Quake Center Established At Menlo

By Bob Lindsey, Staff Writer

The Federal government announced Thursday it is establishing a national research center here to probe the mysteries of earthquakes.

Meanwhile, a top-ranked geologist here said great fissures in the earth are building up tension that will inevitably be released by a major Bay Area earthquake.

The only question is when?

Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall announced in Washington the National Center for Earthquake Research will be established at the U.S. Geological Survey center here.

Primary goal is to find ways to detect earthquakes before they occur.

Udall’s announcement was in response to a presidential scientific panel that, only two days ago, urged that the nation launch a 10 year, $137 million research effort on earthquakes.

Long range plans call for doubling the present Geological Survey complex at 345 Middlefield Road at a cost of nearly $7 million, officials said Thursday.

But this plan was prepared before announcement of the 'quake center, so even more expansion may be necessary.

The man who will have jurisdiction over the new center, George O. Gates, chief of the geologic division, said man now has no means of detecting in advance when an earthquake will occur.

But there are signs aplenty that pressures are building up in the San Andreas fault, which runs straight through Santa Clara Valley, that will be released by an earthquake.

"There’s no questions that there will be a major earthquake somewhere in Northern California, not one, but many" he said.

The fault, he said, is a great cleft in the earth, two miles deep in places.

As a result, earth on one side of the fissure is moving south-eastward and the other is moving west.

"One way of saying it," he said "is that San Francisco and Los Angeles are moving closer together, at about two inches a year."

Since the massive rocks in the earth have some elasticity, they are bending and absorbing this pressure--so far.

But, he said, "a strain is building up and ultimately, these rocks that have been bending will snap back very quickly, and that’s what generates an earthquake."

Scientists, he said, have been trying to detect subtle behavior in the earth that would signal hours, perhaps days or weeks before the earth is about to let off its figurative steam.

The scientists hope the earth telegraphs its punch, like a bad boxes; perhaps through subtle twitches, or changes in the earth’s magnetic field.

Much research needs to be done in the field, he said.

Udall said the center will "stimulate and coordinate research on the causes and predictions of earthquakes and on methods of minimizing loss of life and property resulting from earthquake occurrences in populace areas."

San Jose Mercury News
October 8, 1965

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