December 21, 2006

Hayward going wayward

About an hour or so earlier this evening, a 3.7 earthquake shook Berkeley out of its Wednesday night doldrums. We were having dinner with the Liews when there was loud rumble and the house seemed to shake a bit. My immediate thought was did I do that by bumping the table with my big fat thighs? Was I that loud? Then I realized it was only the Hayward faultline reminding me -- us -- that it sits less than a mile from where I sat eating dinner.

I've felt several quakes since the one on Ash Wednesday last year. They seem to come more often. Or rather, they happen all the time, but when they register high enough for me to notice, I'm not too thrilled.

This makes me wonder, what about the parking structure for UCB's new $120 million sports stadium -- the one that they want to (stupidly?) put right on top of the faultline. But what do I know, I'm not the architects who are paid millions to retrofit a new structure -- it takes great skill to design the facility exactly on top of the earthquake fault. I'm not that kind of genius.

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