In California: Tremors on the Fault

By Joseph J. Kane

Willard D. McNown, a semiretired chiropractor, moved away from the Ridgemark Country Club last year. About 2 in. He did the same the year before. First the living room and an upstairs bedroom moved, then the library and kitchen. The garage, or at least one side of it, followed a little later. Walls cracked, ceilings split and doors jammed. Before long, scientists and sightseers were arriving by the busload.

McNown is not a victim of termites or building-code violations. Rather, the Calaveras fault--a tributary of the mighty San Andreas fault three miles away--runs right under his house in Hollister, Calif, (pop. 11,430), 85 miles south of San Francisco. The local Chamber of Cornmerce likes to stress the area's lush walnut and apricot groves, burgeoning industrial base and commuting proximity to "Silicone Valley." But some Hollister boosters have a catchier slogan for their community: THE EARTHQUAKE CAPITAL OF THE WORLD. Indeed, the San Andreas fault, largest of the 32 active and inactive incisions in San Benito County, stretches out its tightened muscles several times a day, sending shudders through the sandstone and loamy soil. Most of the temblors are minor, and only the 275 seismographs and other instruments screwed into the soil hereabouts pick up the rumble. The equipment is so sensitive that it can distinguish the footfalls of humans from those of deer.

About once a month, though, the juice glasses at Jerry's Restaurant on San Felipe Road rattle in the rack, and the forest of real estate signs on San Benito Street shiver at the crest of a quake scoring 3 or more on the Richter scale. When a 5.9 quake snaked through town in August 1979, Tricia Brem was in labor at Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital; her bed rolled across the room and slammed into the opposite wall. During the same quake, Store Owner Fernando Gonzalez watched $30,000 worth of liquor somersault from his shelves. Gonzalez was a new man to the liquor business, and an old timer cracked, "He should have put his best whisky on the back of the shelf." Gonzalez still has not made up his losses, but he has learned to pen in his bottles with wire.

Denying seismophobia is a matter of civic pride in San Benito County. Explains Edna Martin, manager of the Howard Manor apartments in Hollister: "You get used to the small ones. You feel the rumble, but that is about all. Five years ago, the water in the pool flowed back and forth, and we had to fill it. But I try not to panic my tenants. We have an ideal climate here. We are close to everything. You adapt." Adds David G. Edwards, director of mental-health services in the county: "I have not treated a single case of earthquake anxiety yet." Edwards works in Hollister but lives 40 miles away in Monterey, out of prime temblor territory.

Downtown Hollister could be mistaken for a Trailways comfort stop. Diagonal parking off San Benito Street allows pickup-truck owners to park comfortably and shop at shabby stores with dusty windows. Normally San Benito Street is dark by 9 o'clock, except for the glare of neon from car dealerships and fast-food kiosks. Two blocks away, in a tree-shaded neighborhood of modest bungalows, is the new county administration building. The old building, a Victorian pile put up in 1886, was destroyed in 1961. You guessed it: an earthquake and 400 aftershocks did the damage.

Earthquakes aside, Hollister has small claim to fame. When Babe Ruth arrogantly pointed his finger toward the outfield wall and then hit a home run to that spot against the Chicago Cubs in 1932, it was a Hollister boy, Charlie Root, who served up the pitch. Motorcyclists have long gathered amid the rolling hills outside town for rallies and roguery. Back in 1947 the bikers rumbled into Hollister and lounged around the main street until some boys from the Elks' Lodge poured beer on them from their second-floor meeting room. The infuriated bikers terrorized the town, riding their cycles into bars and through the lobby of the old Hartman Hotel. The tumult inspired a Marlon Brando movie, The Wild One.

At the Hollister Hills Recreational Park south of town, whole packs of mild-mannered motorcyclists ride up and down the fault every weekend for $1.50 a day. Campers arriving early enough can pitch their tents or park their vans right on the fault line and get a closeup look at the offset streams, broken rock formations and hills forged by the geologic, scraping. The park, according to local Businessman Howard Harris, "has the most active movement in the world," with an average creep of 11 mm (.44 in.) each day. But visitors expecting to see a gaping fracture in the earth's surface are usually disappointed. In fact, erosion and fill camouflage the San Andreas fault along most of its 600-mile length.

One block from the fault, Joe Crevea, 70, and three of his friends on San Juan Bautista's volunteer fire department sit for hours on the "liars' bench" in front of the shoe-repair store. Old Joe guesses he has been in 100 quakes but never walks up to view the fault, fearing the fire alarm may scream while he is gone. His nonchalance is widely shared. "It is like living next to the Mississippi River," says a San Juan Bautista housewife.

Some of the natives are not above making a few bucks off their adversity. At the Fault Line Restaurant in San Juan Bautista, the previous owner called himself Sam Andreas and offered free meals to patrons on the premises when a quake of 3.5 or better struck. Becky McGovern, owner of the Mariposa House Restaurant in San Juan Bautista, wants to have an "earthquake festival" along the fault to attract visitors this summer. Some years ago in Hollister, Newspaper Publisher Millard Hoyle suggested an earthquake carnival of his own. It called for, among other things, a macabre ride in a room that "would simulate a five" on the Richter scale. The scheme was turned down.

The offset curbs, sinking streets and chipped cement steps in Hollister testify to the fault's ornery nature. To appreciate its sheer power, a trip to Almaden's Cienega Winery ten miles to the south is instructive. From afar, nothing seems amiss: manicured vines growing Cabernet, Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grapes sweep to the base of the Gabilan Mountains. Up close, the scene is not so idyllic: the San Andreas splits the winery building like a conveyor belt. On the North American plate, employees are playing basketball. Across the road, on the Pacific plate, there is a seminar for salesmen in a conference center. Half of the 5,330-gal. oaken tanks of stored wine are on the American plate, while the rest are sliding by, ever so slowly, on the Pacific plate; if they maintained present course and speed, they would arrive in San Francisco in a few millenniums. The gray, wooden posts serving as door jambs have moved 12 in. to the right. Outside, a drainage ditch zagged 18 in. Fire-fighting water lines that cross the fault have flexible joints to allow for earth movement.

But Almaden is not going anywhere. Neither is Crevea or Martin. One Berkeley geologist confronted a homeowner and urged her to move, since she lived on the Calaveras fault that parallels West Street in Hollister. She shooed him off, saying, "It's my home."

That is a normal reaction, according to U.C.L.A. Sociologist Ralph H. Turner, who spent two years studying the concerns of Southern Californians. Says he: "We don't worry about threats or risks unless they are highly probable and imminent. When we are confronted with threats about which we can do nothing, we react by denial. It keeps our sanity."

As for McNown, 63, he has hunkered down for a long struggle. He has installed a wooden shim to hold his garage together, and he has poured 80 yds. of concrete to reinforce the foundation. "I grew up in this house," he explains. "It has always been my home. Others can leave. I am not overcome with fear. Besides, I like the craftsmanship."

--By Joseph J. Kane

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