’Quake Rumour Denied

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31942, 20 March 1969, Page 15

’Quake Rumour Denied

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

LOS ANGELES, March 19.

Rumours that a major earthquake may soon destroy Los Angeles and San Francisco have become so widespread that two eminent scientists have issued a formal denial.

The Civil defence officer has been flooded with requests for disaster kits. Alarmed citizens have jammed the switchboards at the California Institute of Technology for information from its earthquake research department. According to the rumours, the earthquake will strike on Good Friday, April 4, and wipe out all major cities on the California coast Dr Charles Richter, developer of the Richter Scale for measuring an earthquake’s intensity, issued a joint statement with Dr James Brune, a noted geo-

physicist who works with him at the California Institute of Technology. They said: “Wild predictions of disastrous earthquakes are not supported by scientific evidence and are frightening Californians needlessly. “The motion of the San Andreas fault—which initiates many of California’s earthquakes—has been going on for at least five million years and will presumably continue for millions of future years.” Although the two scientists describe the rumours as “ridiculous” Dr Richter said there was a danger of a major earthquake in California but science could not predict whether it might occur

next month or in 1000 years. Even if there were such an earthquake, he said, the ground shift was seldom more than 10ft to 20ft at the centre point—hardly enough to cast a major city into the sea.

Sceptics point out that Dr Richter is going to Washington to deliver a lecture on Good Friday and will be 3000 miles away form the scene of the disaster at the time. Predictions of the earthquake have been fostered by mystics and spread through books, posters, records and television jokes. One comedian said promoters already were preparing for a new beach property boom hundreds of miles inland from the present Pacific Ocean coastline after tidal waves rolled into the vast deserts and valleys.

A popular book, “The Last Days of the Late, Great State of California,” a best-seller in San Francisco, describes the disaster, in which the San Andreas fault, which runs the length of the state, opens up wide. Buildings and bridges tumble, dams break and the Pacific Ocean cascades inward, swallowing up the land and 15 million casualties.

Popular songs—“ California Earthquake” and “Day After Day”—mourn the loss of the state's hippie haunts.

One comedian claimed that the multi-millionaire, Mr Howard ,Hughes, knew all along that California would go, and that was why he cornered the market on Nevada “beachfront” land.