Word: bedrock
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Ever since, waters from the surrounding bedrock and a maze of old mine tunnels and shafts have been rushing in and reacting with the ores to form a toxic soup that rises steadily, year after year, like water in a vast bathtub. It's the Berkeley Pit, and it's a man-made wonder of horrific proportions--an oval lake of acidic mining residues so deep that it could swallow an 80-story skyscraper...
...American design who was perhaps the greatest architect of the century: Frank Lloyd Wright. The decade's supreme collective artifact, in steel and stone, was, of course, Manhattan itself, with its immense towers--Chrysler, Empire State and the rest--rising like blasts of congealed and shining energy from the bedrock, a spectacle of Promethean ambition and daring...
...m.p.h., far faster than a person can run. Fortunately, most debris flows funnel through fairly narrow channels, and so the damage they inflict is limited. But Californians are at risk for a second type of slide, which the U.S. Geological Survey's David Howell refers to as a "bedrock landslide." Such deep-seated slides move slowly and pose little hazard to life (unless, as happened in Rio Nido, they also trigger debris flows). In their own way, however, bedrock slides are equally pernicious...
...dwellers might as well get ready for more devastation. Up and down the coastline, hundreds of hillsides are starting to slump and slide. And the reason, say experts, is simple. Weeks of relentless rain have saturated not just the top few inches of soil but also underlying layers of bedrock, causing structural weakening deep down. By itself, waterlogged ground is a nuisance. Combined with California's mountainous terrain, says Doug Morton of the U.S. Geological Survey in Riverside, Calif., it can very quickly add up to disaster. Imagine living on the edge of a steep, quivering pile of chocolate pudding...
During the coming months, scenes like this are likely to repeat themselves many times over. Thanks to El Nino, still more storms are expected to savage California well into spring. Once the weather improves, debris flows will end. But bedrock landslides won't dissipate until the waterlogged hillsides drain. Long after sparkling sunshine has replaced sullen skies, experts warn, Californians are likely to find their property slip-sliding away...