Brian Gongol
Fire grows near Yosemite National Park
And in related California disaster news, a Caltech seismologist is calling yesterday's earthquake near Los Angeles a "drill for the Big One." Unfortunately, as with wildfires, earthquakes are the kinds of disasters that only intensify the longer time passes between events. It's been a long time since a big quake in the Los Angeles area, and the longer it takes for a really large quake to occur again, the bigger the next Really Big One will be. Technology has certainly changed since the Northridge quake -- people are using new technology, like Twitter, to share the news as instantaneously as the event itself occurs. Twitter is even trumpeting how much faster the word "earthquake" spiked than when it appeared in conventional news channels. At the very least, perhaps, the quake gave some people a reminder to update their preparedness plans.
