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FEATURED, LOCAL NEWS, TOP STORY FOOD STAMP ELIGIBILITY CHANGE COULD AFFECT THOUSANDS OF LOCAL RESIDENTS JULY 24, 2019 | Z107.7 NEWS | LEAVE A COMMENT A change in food stamp eligibility could negatively affect hundreds—if not thousands—of Morongo Basin residents. As of Wednesday, July 24, the Trump administration is capping the income level of those who are eligible to receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. Under the old guidelines, California and 39 other states allow a family of four to have an income that is up to double the federal poverty level to receive food stamps; in California, that is $50,208. https://datausa.io/prole/geo/san-bernardino-county-ca/ The new federal guidelines would limit the annual income level to $32,640 for a family of four. Under the old guidelines, 11 out of 14 census tracts in the Morongo Basin had median household incomes that qualied families of four for food stamps. Under the new guidelines, only three census tracts—in north Joshua Tree, Wonder Valley, and Landers north into Johnson Valley—have median household incomes that would qualify a family of four for SNAP. Administration ofcials say the change will save the US government $2.5 billion annually. The US annual budget is $4.1 trillion, with a decit of $779 billion. SHARE THIS: BREAKING NEWS California reaches climate deal with automakers, spurning Trump ADVERTISEMENT CALIFORNIA Ridgecrest earthquake just a taste of destruction San Andreas could unleash Authorities declared a mobile home unfit to live in after it was dislodged from its foundation in a mobile home park. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) By RONG-GONG LIN II STAFF WRITER JULY 25, 2019 3 AM Faults crisscross California, producing deadly earthquakes. But whenever the ground shakes, the first thought always turns to the mightiest and most dangerous fault: The San Andreas. This is the 730-mile monster capable of producing “The Big One,” the fault famous enough to be the main character in a hit disaster movie. Scientists knew almost immediately that two large quakes that hit near Ridgecrest earlier this month did not come from the San Andreas. ADVERTISING inRead invented by Teads But ever since, they’ve been studying whether the quakes could cause more seismic activity from other faults — including the San Andreas nearly 100 miles away. A new calculation conducted in recent weeks at the U.S. Geological Survey shows that there’s an extremely remote chance the San Andreas could be triggered from the Ridgecrest quakes. “It’s slim. But it’s the difference between slim and none,” said USGS seismologist Susan Hough. “I don’t think any earth scientists are going to lose sleep that this will cascade on to the San Andreas.” But the fault remains a source of constant anxiety, especially when ground moves. Previous quakes on the San Andreas were triggered by earlier nearby temblors. The great magnitude 7.8 quake in 1857 that ruptured 225 miles of the fault between Monterey County to the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County was preceded by a pair of smaller quakes one and two hours earlier. (Raoul Rañoa / Los Angeles Times) Earthquakes in Southern California in 1992, 2001, 2009 and 2016 all sparked concerns from scientists they could trigger a major quake on the San Andreas. In some of those cases, officials even issued a public warning of heightened seismic risk. For example, after the twin quakes in Landers and Big Bear in 1992, state officials announced there was a 50% chance of another big temblor in the coming days. None, however, caused the Big One on the southern San Andreas. In the case of the recent temblors, the potential for the San Andreas to be triggered by the Ridgecrest quakes seems to be less of a concern, relatively speaking. “We know that earthquakes can trigger other faults, even hundreds of miles away,” said USGS research geophysicist Morgan Page. “On one hand, the probability may go up. But,” she added, “it’s not a big increase compared to the risk we have year-to-year from the San Andreas, living in California.” The recent calculation is highly theoretical, and relies on a model known as the Third Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, or UCERF3-ETAS, an epidemic-type aftershock sequence model that factors how an earthquake in one location can transfer seismic stress to a nearby fault. Like anything being researched, it’s possible that this calculation about the San Andreas is wrong. A scenario like the one envisioned in the recent calculation — a Ridgecrest-to-San Andreas situation that spans some 100 miles — has not happened in California’s relatively short modern record. The southern San Andreas is quite dangerous on its own and can rupture without any nudging from a distant Mojave Desert fault. And it’s accumulating seismic stress so fast that even if it did rupture soon, scientists would probably spend the rest of their careers arguing over whether the July quakes had anything to do with it, said USGS research geologist Kate Scharer. A big quake on the San Andreas would be devastating. The U.S. Geological Survey published a hypothetical scenario of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault that could kill 1,800 people, injure 5,000, displace some 500,000 to 1 million people from their homes and hobble the region economically for a generation. That quake would send strong shaking into Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, Kern and Ventura counties almost simultaneously. “There’s plenty of accumulated strain there,” Scharer said. “It’s the highest hazard fault, and it was before the [Ridgecrest] earthquake, and it will continue to be after the earthquake. “It’s been quiet for so long.” World-famous fault The San Andreas fault has increasingly captured the imaginations of Californians over the years, likely assisted by the eponymous Hollywood action movie starring Dwayne Johnson in 2015, and its starring role in villain Lex Luthor’s evil scheme in the Superman movie of 1978. Even when far-off earthquakes occur, the public’s appetite for any information about the San Andreas is insatiable. Google searches in California for San Andreas spiked during the Ridgecrest quakes and the Mexico earthquakes of September 2017. TV news chyrons earlier this month blared with text how the Ridgecrest quakes were not on the San Andreas. The obsession with the San Andreas is not without reason. Only three earthquakes in California’s modern record have been as large as magnitude 7.8, and two of them were on the San Andreas — the one in 1906 that destroyed most of San Francisco in shaking and fire, and the Southern California megaquake in 1857, when the region was sparsely populated. A magnitude 7.8 quake produces 45 times more energy than the 1994 magnitude 6.7 Northridge quake. California’s megafault Out of the many faults in California, the San Andreas is singularly poised to be the one that unleashes a megaquake in our lifetime. The San Andreas is the main plate boundary between the mammoth Pacific and North American plates, and is a key dividing line moving southwestern California — encompassing cities like Half Moon Bay, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Anaheim — toward Alaska. The other side, with cities like San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno and Las Vegas, is moving, relatively speaking, toward where Mexico is today. The San Andreas is by far the fault accumulating seismic strain the fastest in California, making it among the likeliest to rupture in a big way in the coming decades . And it is the longest fault, making it capable of producing the most powerful earthquakes in the Golden State. Over the course of centuries, the San Andreas fault moves at a breathtaking speed compared to most California faults — the speed at which fingernails grow, and much faster than most other faults. The seismic strain can be detected by GPS satellites — Mission Viejo in Orange County, on the southwest side of the San Andreas, can be seen scooting every year to the northwest, while Twentynine Palms in the Mojave Desert, on the other side of the fault can be seen moving to the southeast, relatively speaking. GPS sensors show that Mission Viejo in Orange County and Twentynine Palms in the Mojave Desert are moving away from each other about 1.2 inches annually, relatively speaking, according to UNAVCO, a nonprofit university-owned consortium. (National Science Foundation GAGE Facility / UNAVCO) But along most parts of the San Andreas, the ground is not creeping. It’s stuck for long periods of time, and sooner or later, it needs to move in a huge quake to catch up with the rest of the continental plate. On average, there’s about 12 feet of movement per century along the 730-mile San Andreas fault system between Point Arena in Mendocino County and the Mexican border. The amount of moved earth in a magnitude 7.8 quake can be eye-popping. In a remote section of Desert Hot Springs near Palm Springs, a couple holding hands across the San Andreas during such a megaquake would suddenly be separated as much as 30 feet, almost the entire length of a city bus, Scharer has said. A domino scenario But the San Andreas is not the only fault to be worried about. The Ridgecrest quakes occurred in a vast seismic region called the Eastern California Shear Zone, representing a broad swath of the state that includes Palm Springs and the Owens Valley. (Zach Levitt / Los Angeles Times) Although little known by the public, the zone has been the subject of intense investigation by scientists.

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