Word: prieta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Looking back 20 years later, however, seismologists say the Bay Area got lucky. The epicenter of the quake was near Loma Prieta peak in Santa Clara County, outside the densely populated urban neighborhoods of San Francisco and Oakland. The destruction missed Silicon Valley - with its tens of billions in economic value - altogether. "If that quake had to happen, that was really the best place," says Yanev. "We were about as lucky as we could get." (See TIME's special report "Where Will the Next Five Big Earthquakes...
...difference between then and now is that these cities are growing, which means more and more people will be living in seismological danger zones. The key to minimizing damage is to prepare for the inevitable. "The Loma Prieta quake was really a wake-up call for this region," says David Schwartz, a USGS geologist and the co-chair of the San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake Alliance. "But we still have a lot to do." (See pictures of Indonesia's devastating earthquake...
...Cabeza Prieta is just one part of the 2,000-mile-long border that conservationists are increasingly worried about. While politicians of all stripes focus on the human side of the noisy immigration debate, there is a rising concern over what illegal immigration and the U.S. response to it may do to the area's fragile ecosystems. The $7.6 billion federal Secure Border Initiative passed last year calls for the construction of 370 miles of pedestrian fence along the border by 2008 - 129 miles in Arizona, 153 in Texas, 76 in California and 12 in New Mexico. Pedestrian fences have...
...Aerial views taken of Cabeza Prieta in 1998 show an almost pristine wilderness, according to the refuge's land manager, Roger DiRosa. But ever since the late 1990s, when U.S. Border Patrol officials embarked on several aggressive, successful clampdowns near El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, California, much of the illegal human traffic has shifted to the wilderness areas around New Mexico and Arizona...
...park ranger at neighboring Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument was killed by drug smugglers. Vehicle barriers, which allow animals to pass back and forth, are now in place along parts of the Arizona border. More are planned and will soon be protecting Cabeza Prieta. But drug smugglers have adapted and DiRosa said there has been an increase in backpacking gangs. On the Mexican side, conservationists face the same challenges - one large Mexican refuge has several clandestine airstrips operated by the cartels, which operate with impunity...