Word: coalinga
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Surprisingly, the hazards of thrust faults were largely overlooked until 1983, when a fierce temblor hit the small central California town of Coalinga. The culprit turned out to be a deeply buried fault (four to 10 miles down) that no one had known about. Its only sign on the surface had been a fold, or buckling, in the earth's crust. Many scientists had thought such folds were harmless, formed by an imperceptibly gradual lifting of the ground. But when Ross Stein, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and geologist Robert Yeats of Oregon State University examined the seismic...