When We Buy a House

It is so fun to talk to Geologists. Learning geology has been SO much fun. What does this have to do about buying a house? Well since houses are build on a dynamic Earth, everything. We are talking about faulting along the Wasatch front and it gets me to thinking about where my brother lives. Theoretically within the lifetime of my brother (if he still lives in his house) nothing could happen, or a big earthquake could happen. We were talking about what would happen to some areas along the Wasatch Front when the next 7.5 earthquake hits.


The first thing I remembered was Alex telling me that he lives in the liquefaction zone. When I thought of that I think of a house sinking into a swamp like thing. I think this is what most people think of. Well, this is only in tropics where the water table is right up to the continental surface. In Utah, the water table is lower. There are little underground sandy grit rivers where water can flow easier through it. The stuff above that is basically dry and brittle. So, when it gets liquefied in an earthquake, 2 cracks form on the fringes of the "river" and you get mud volcanoes. Once the mud is on the surface, you have the empty space where the river was. The crust on top, falls in with brittle faulting.



I thought that is FASCINATING! I also found out that there is a pretty active fault underneath the Great Salt Lake that is in a "earthquake gap". When there is a gap along a fault line usually that means it is the next to go. So, out of all the faults in the Wasatch Fault system, this *should* be the next one to go. The thing with any fault under water, it creates a tsunami. Yes, this includes the Salt Lake. If this fault goes, it is projected to have a displacement of 15 feet. This would mean a 15 foot tsunami would make its way East covering quite a bit of the land to the East. When that goes, I want to see the Airport sink. It will. I promise. It will.

So those are the things that I learned today that I had to write about. I love geology.

When I buy a house I will be going to the local geology department and get real time facts of the local geology. Not this city engineer stuff they call good. The Salt Palace is built right on top of a "river" because of a corrupt county geologist. So I don't trust them but universities, I trust.

Here is a video that I find pretty cool.