Word: larger
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Francisco may have established itself as the earthquake capital of the U.S., but seismologists have long warned that Los Angeles is the more vulnerable city. Because Los Angeles has not suffered a massive tremor in this century and has a much larger population, a major quake could result in far greater devastation. The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that an 8.3 magnitude temblor (16 times as powerful as the one that hit San Francisco) on the southern San Andreas fault near Los Angeles could cause $17 billion in property damage and between 3,000 and 14,000 deaths...
Experts are unnervingly in agreement that Los Angeles is overdue for a catastrophic shaking. "We feel there is a 60% probability for an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 or larger sometime in the next 30 years," says James H. Dieterich, a geophysicist for the U.S. Geological Survey. Last year the survey reported that the Los Angeles area overlies three fault segments, any of which is capable of producing an enormous quake. Since 1857, when a monster measuring 8.3 on the Richter scale strewed destruction from the Cholame Valley in central California to the Cajon Pass near San Bernardino...
...programs, that is most unlikely, and no one in Washington will even whisper the T word. Most likely, the $3 billion, and more that California lawmakers warned they will request later, will be financed by simply running the money- printing presses a bit faster and making the budget deficit larger and more intractable...
...least one original sponsor still defends his offspring. Says Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm: "It's bashing time for Gramm-Rudman, but our biggest critics are those who weren't for it to begin with. Without the law, our federal deficit would have been larger than...
...disasters -- wars, acid rain and other pollutions, drugs, a globe aswarm with refugees. Perhaps it is a relief for a moment to be face to face with a disaster that man did not invent, a cataclysm that has at least a sort of innocence of origin in larger powers...