36 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GEOLOGY 



noted two prolonged shocks which vibrated his bed 

 very appreciably. He even thought it was a temblor 

 which might have been on the Inglewood or the Los 

 Angeles City faults, and he telephoned to Eagle Rock, 

 Inglew^ood and other nearby points for reports, but 

 none came which testified to any more severe effects 

 than we had experienced in the heart of the city. 

 Later in the day the press reported that the epicentrum 

 was probably between Surf and Honda, a few miles 

 southwest of Lompoc and some 150 miles northwest of 

 Los Angeles. It was interesting to find in the 

 fine type below the fear-creating headlines that the 

 damage done was "one chimney shaken down and one 

 plate glass window broken." And the next column told 

 of great floods in New England and India, where count- 

 less lives and houses were destroyed. 



While some of these shocks, especially those along 

 the San Jacinto rifts in 1893 and 1918 may have been 

 moderately severe and destructive to very poorly con- 

 structed buildings, there are hundred of thousands of 

 intelligent people living in California who experienced 

 most of them and who do not look backwards upon 

 them with any harrowing recollections, nor have they 

 any fear in their minds of their future recurrences. 



The important deduction from these statistics is, 

 that while a few mild shocks may be of nearby origin, 

 most of the temblors felt in Los Angeles are diminished 

 vibrations from more or less distant fault lines — princi- 

 pally the Elsinore, the San Jacinto and San Andreas 

 rifts — yet no one of them has ever caused serious 

 disaster. Another important deduction is, that the 

 vibrations of the shocks along the San Andreas line of 

 seismicity has seldom been felt in this city. The 



