Hi 2 Cents,

The location of the quake was actually determined and a field investigation was done.

Not all faults can deliver a 7.0 quake. They have to be of a certain size to do so. Fault length and depth have a great role in making this determination. The Maacama Fault where the Ukiah and Willits 4.0 quakes of late have been occurring is believed to cut down to the mantle and is hundreds of miles long. Thus a 7.0 quake along there is very likely at some time in the future. But there are literally thousands of smaller, less significant faults which are in the Bay Area and throughout CA in general that never would go over a 4.0, let alone deliver a 7.0.

They have yet to determine the actual fault where the Yountville quake occurred because there was no surface rupture and there is no named fault for that area. Jim Berkland said he mapped it out years ago and presented his data to the USGS and it was never published on their maps. This kind of thing happens all of the time, so its not that unusual.

But one thing we should all be aware of is that science funding of all types is shrinking by the day and the time and equipment that is needed for future projections on faults is not going to be there for us. The project to install instrumentation for the lower part of the Rodgers Creek Fault which sits in a seismic gap has been scrubbed as funding ran out. We seriously needed that equipment, but its not going to arrive any time in the near future.

Right now the only instrument that is down in that area is from Earthquake Tracker and I'm darn glad Tom decided to install some equipment in that location. But here we see that public funding sometimes has to come into play when science funding is not available.

Most likely until we recover from the funding needs for our soldiers in Afghanistan and airport security, geosciences will be taking a back seat to government funding support for the near future at any rate.

But who knows, maybe in twenty years there will be enough public entities to achieve what the government has not accomplished by grant funding and we may be in better shape then, than we are today. You never know.

Petra