Geologists have been left disappointed after a certain misaligned curb was ordered to be fixed by Hayward, California city management:
To the average pedestrian, it was just a curb. To an observant one, perhaps, it was an oddly misaligned curb. To geologists, it was a snapshot of the earth's shifting tectonic plates — an accidental experiment, a field trip destination for decades. But to the town of Hayward, Calif., it was just a bit of subpar infrastructure.
The Los Angeles Times sums up what happened next: "Then, one early June day, a city crew decided to fix the faulty curb — pun intended. By doing what cities are supposed to do – fixing streets – the city's action stunned scientists, who said a wonderful curbside laboratory for studying earthquakes was destroyed."
Geologist David Schwartz of the U.S. Geologic Survey spoke with NPR on Wednesday. He has been visiting the curb for 30 years. He says the fault that broke the curb — the Hayward fault — is "one of the major and most important faults in the San Francisco Bay Area." "In probably the late 1950s, your standard sidewalk curb was built across the fault — and the fault is creeping," Schwartz explained. "That means it moves a little bit every year, maybe about four millimeters. It broke through the curb and started pushing it out. And over the years it has moved it eight inches." A website for geology-themed field trips has photos of the curb dating back to the early '70s. They show the separating halves of the curb at first disjointed but overlapping, then growing farther apart.
Now the curb is gone — making way for a wheelchair-accessible ramp, the LA Times reports.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @01:18AM
I wish... I so fucking wish...
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Friday July 08 2016, @02:36AM
If only they were faithful their religion, damned apostates to Science!
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(Score: 5, Funny) by forkazoo on Friday July 08 2016, @02:44AM
Lacking other fun class demos besides visiting Hayward to help make Geology seem tangible and exciting, the League of Geology Teachers today unveiled their new Earthquake Generator...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @02:45AM
Suddenly I'm thinking of American History X.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @01:21AM
> A website for geology-themed field trips has photos of the curb dating back to the early '70s
So it took the city 40 years to fix it?
How is that not the story?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 08 2016, @02:14AM
That is not a story because it's so common. The first time I went into the Port of Houston, the street was horrible. There were potholes that could swallow compact cars. Over the course of about 15 years, I never saw any work done on that street. It just got worse, and worse. The best thing that could happen, is a sinkhole opening up, and swallowing that area. Then, the city or the state might build a bridge over it.
A deteriorating infrastructure is not news these days.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday July 08 2016, @01:51PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Friday July 08 2016, @10:01AM
So it took the city 40 years to fix it?
How is that not the story?
So the best tool Geologists have of measuring the movement of a huge, active fault running through a densely populated area is (was) a wonky kerbstone?
How is that not the story?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @12:50PM
There really was not a problem 40 years ago, this has been getting worse over time. It finally got so bad the city most likely figured someone was in danger of hitting it, just loot at the pictures on the site.
(Score: 3, Funny) by DECbot on Friday July 08 2016, @03:40PM
Those crazy fools!!! They don't realize the damage they have done!
The new curb is a communist^W militant fundamentalist terrorist plot to hold the tectonic plates stationary with a politically correct access ramp, thus allowing tremendous pressures to build up until one day in the near future, this ramp fails and therefore triggering a series of quakes all along the network of faults throughout the west coast in greater magnitude then ever recorded before, all in short succession and ultimately plunging everything east of the San Andreas fault into the Atlantic Ocean!
We must bring our pickaxes and sledgehammers, foil the terrorist plot by destroying the curb and ramp, and save America!
Make America Great Again!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by Snotnose on Friday July 08 2016, @01:27AM
I was 4 years old. My only memories are dad pitching wiffle balls to me, I knocked them over the fence to the freeway. Then we'd get in the car, dad would drive to the freeway behind our house, tell me to stay put, then get out and hunt for the wiffle ball.
Another thing I remember from then was I was friends with some girl down the street and her younger sister. She (older she) managed to lay her bike down and grind her skin down to the bone. I still remember 4 year old me looking at her bone and thinking "this can't be good". This would be '62 or so, I might remember an ambulance but not clearly. We moved to San Diego when I was 5.
When I was 15 or so we were on vacation in the area, and my younger sister wanted to see our old house (she was 3 when we moved). Found the house, and the 2 sisters still lived there. Older girl had a nasty ass scar on her knee. What really got me was both sisters were fat as fuck, and between them had the neuron capacity of your average petri dish. I was both shocked and horrified.
The point? I dunno, you can't go home again?
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Friday July 08 2016, @01:37AM
The ground should open up and swallow the entire town of Hayward, California?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @01:48AM
> both sisters were fat as fuck
A lot of people have mobility problems because they're obese. If they need those motorized wheelchairs, at least there's one corner they'll be able to navigate. Good on the city for building the ramp (although I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lawsuit, or the threat of one, impelling them).
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday July 08 2016, @02:20AM
An ex-UDT-Frogman had surgery to remove his legs, due ot diabetes. He and another guy shared a semi-private room before and after surgery. They were together a lot during rehab. Jim (the frogman) opted for a plain old-fashioned wheelchair to get around on. The other guy got a motorized wheelchair. Jim worked his ass off, "driving" his wheelchair. The other guy leisurely went here and there.
The other guy was dead, dead, dead in 2 1/2 years. Diabetes and a heart attack got him.
Jim was still going strong fifteen years after his amputation.
Moral of the story? I guess you should go deep sea diving to stay healthy? Errrr - no - EXERCISE!! Otherwise, you tend to get fat as fuck.
Hail to the Nibbler in Chief.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @02:42AM
I don't know about the subject except for having glimpsed people when they're out in public. I see some people who look really heavy and I imagine they may truly need the motor to get about. It looks like a vicious cycle because their bodies cannot use much energy when they travel that way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @04:56AM
A lot of people have mobility problems because they're too lazy to move themselves around.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Saturday July 09 2016, @02:15AM
Keep in mind I was 15, the sisters were maybe 15 and 13. In the 70's. I wasn't joking when I said "fat as fuck", and "stupid as fuck". My 15 y/0 self was flabbergasted both at how fat those girls were, and how stupid they were.
/I'm white
// they were white
/// if it matters
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @01:50AM
Out on the road today I saw a Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac.
A little voice inside my head said:
"Don't look back, you can never look back."
That's not really what Henley meant, but lyrics are what you make of them.
(Score: 2, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday July 08 2016, @02:34AM
There is nothing sadder than a forlorn geologist. Oh, the humanity!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Tork on Friday July 08 2016, @02:38AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @06:55AM
Seriously though, if they found it that important they should have got a few reference poles stuck in the ground and used those for proper measurements.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @03:35AM
The city is just trying to stay ahead of the curb.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday July 08 2016, @11:02AM
That's an awful pun, but I can't fault you for trying.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday July 08 2016, @06:43AM
Maybe the scientists should have informed the city about the importance of that curb for science, asking for it to preserved. After all, they had to expect that one day it will be fixed.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @08:06AM
Maybe they've calculated it as only 0.001% possible and called it good enough.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday July 08 2016, @08:18AM
Faulty Curb Fixed; Geologists Forlorn
Best headline ever.
But won't the new curb undergo something similar? And while it's a great demonstration tool, I can't imagine it makes a huge contribution to actual science of geology.
Then, one early June day, a city crew decided to fix the faulty curb — pun intended.
Uhh... what pun?
Oop, wait, just got it, never mind.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Friday July 08 2016, @08:21AM
Oh yeah, and: that curb was dangerous and needed fixing. Sorry geologists
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 08 2016, @08:51AM
That moment when you're staring at the curb and realize you're a geologist.
(Score: 1) by pyroclast on Friday July 08 2016, @03:29PM
As a research geologist it's extremely useful to have this type of real world example for conceptual concepts explained in the classroom. To see a fault creep displacement in human time, only reinforces the evidence in tectonic faults. That being said, this is now opportunity to see how the city engineer prepared for the creep. With a 4mm/yr slip rate we should see something within the next 5 to 10 years, which isn't bad for fault morphology. I do find it interesting the lack of damage to the sidewalks, but that's what the bricks are for? As a right-lateral slip fault (direction based on observation, explained here http://scedc.caltech.edu/Module/sec1pg16.html [caltech.edu]), based on the the space of bricks remaining, they have about 230 years (way rough estimate) before the curb hits the sidewalk. Not the entire sidewalk, just the portion overhanging the fault. Now if we only had a picture of the fixed curb, you know, this whole story's purpose.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday July 09 2016, @02:56AM
Perhaps they haven't finished replacing it yet. I've seen street markings that say something is going to be replaced, and they've been in place for over a year. I've seen a building being in the process of being torn-down and replaced for over two months. (We're talking here about a one story garage. The old version had neither plumbing nor electricity, and I don't know about the replacement version. It hasn't gotten far enough up to be able to tell. The cement pad has had plenty of time to set, however, so unless they tear it up again any electricity or water will come in either through the walls or through the roof. Usually a better idea anyway.)
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