Part of the Lake Isabella Dam is built directly on a fault that could create shaking stronger than the earthquake that devastated Haiti six months ago, according to a study scheduled to be released in September.
Such an earthquake could cause serious, perhaps complete, damage to Isabella's auxiliary dam. If the dam were full, a complete and sudden failure could send a wall of water down the Kern Canyon toward Bakersfield. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers have kept water levels low for years to prevent such a disaster.
The Corps of Engineers has been studying the Kern Canyon Fault since before the dam was built in 1953. Engineers always knew it was there but believed it was dormant.
Two geologists from the California Institute of Technology say new evidence proves the fault is not dormant. In fact, they say, their study proves the fault is capable of cracking a quake of Magnitude 6.5 to 7.5. That’s as strong or stronger than the Jan. 12 Magnitude 7 that struck Haiti.
The scientists, Elisabeth Nadin and Jason Saleeby, will publish their findings in the September issue of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America.
The fault runs directly under the auxiliary dam.
Dr. Rob Negrini, a Professor of Geology at California State University Bakersfield says, “This one went off 12,000 years ago, but we haven't seen activity on it in the past couple hundred years."
Kern County's Office of Emergency Services knows about the potential for disaster.
Georgianna Armstrong, Manager of OES, says the county has a dam failure evacuation plan in place should it happen.
"We have a pretty good idea where the water would go,” she said. “We've identified evacuation routes. We've identified intersections where we expect there might be traffic congestion."
A map from the Corps of Engineers shows in the unlikely event of a major earthquake, if the dam were full, some Bakersfield homes could be under 30 feet of water.
