CA Gov. Newsom Says Latest Earthquakes Are a ‘Wake-up Call’

Following two sizable earthquakes over the Fourth of July weekend in parts of Southern California, California Governor Gavin Newsom said “It is a wake-up call for the rest of the state and other parts of the nation, frankly.” Newsom said at a press conference Saturday that governments be on the alert and strengthen alert systems and building codes, and California residents need to make sure they know how to protect themselves during an earthquake.

Dr. Egill Hauksson, a seismologist at CalTech, held a press conference Saturday and was asked by a reporter, “Could fracking in Kern County have anything to do with these earthquakes?” Dr. Hauksson said:

“I think that’s — no. I think I can answer that — no. I don’t have to put a qualifier on that.

“There is a geothermal area at the very north end….That’s the coastal geothermal area where there’s a — very large energy production going on where they pump water into the ground to harness heat from the rock. But if they had had something to do with this, we would have expected the activity to maybe start much closer to the geothermal area and then emanate from there.

“But again, the reason we have a geothermal field there is in part due to the active tectonics. It’s due to the ongoing geological deformation. So in that particular area the crust is being thinned and phttps://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1050&v=o7UScNXRrs0ulled apart so heat can easily rise from the interior of the earth, and we are able to harness that for electricity production.”