RESEDA : Fault Offers a Vivid Lesson for Students

There is something about living through a 6.8 earthquake that makes a lesson in physical science a little more interesting.

At least that was the case for 58 Reseda High School students who scrambled up dusty trails, climbed over barbed wire and scaled slopes of loose gravel above the Antelope Valley Freeway near Palmdale on Monday to see how the San Andreas Fault has twisted and folded the earth’s sedimentary layers.

“For something that big to happen, you want to know what makes it happen,” 16-year-old Ambra Sultzbaugh said of the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. “It makes it more clear to see it in person.”

Although the 600-mile-long San Andreas Fault was not a factor in the Northridge temblor, the contorted layers of sedimentary rock visible from the Antelope Valley Freeway offer a vivid lesson on what causes any earthquake to happen. The Antelope Valley Freeway slices through the fault--which marks the meeting of the Pacific and North American plates--exposing cliffs with U-shaped lines of sediment where the plates butted against each other.

Reseda science instructor Tony Recalde, who has taken his students to the San Andreas Fault for several years, said the trip was much more popular this year than ever before. “All these kids wanted to come,” Recalde said. “They are taking it more seriously. It hits home.”

The students, mostly sophomores, take integrated science at Reseda, which combines lessons in biology, chemistry, earth science and physics. The view of the San Andreas Fault, where Avenue S meets the Antelope Valley Freeway, was one of a half a dozen stops on a daylong science tour.

Recalde pointed out that the sediment formations helped students identify minerals and showed them the hundreds of homes built directly on the fault zone. “I would never live out here,” Recalde said. “This would be ground zero as far as I am concerned.”

Armed with plastic bags and picks for digging, the students scaled the rugged slopes, stopping to search for bits of gypsum and other minerals to bring back in plastic bags. “It’s really amazing, actually,” said Melissa Puccio, 17, standing on a narrow trail more than 100 feet above the freeway to gaze at the maze of sedimentary layers.

“In California there are always earthquakes. You might as well understand them.”