

The Town That Creep Built - ascertain
http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-town-that-creep-built.html

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function_seven
How do property line disputes get resolved in an environment like this?
Imagine you and your neighbor are engaged in a petty feud over the location of
a block wall. Does your property change shape with the Earth? Or do fixed
objects drift into your property, and now that wall belongs to you?

EDIT: This kind of answers, but it's not entirely clear:
[http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/When-property-lines-
ru...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/When-property-lines-run-through-
the-front-door-2662450.php)

~~~
stephengillie
I'm working with a simplified model - visualize a row of 10 houses, each on a
square plot. There's a street running along the row of houses, and a street at
each end.

Now, the land slides 1/2 plot to the right. To simplify this model, the slide
happens overnight.

This means that each house slides right 1/2 plot. All of the cars slide 1/2
plot to the right. The yards and all the flowers slide 1/2 plot to the right.

And the road slides 1/2 plot to the right.

So this means that one of these residents now owns 1/2 plot of public roadway.
Are they allowed to toll drivers for using their roadway?

The city (or county or state) now owns 1/2 plot of yard (and 1/2 of a house),
which isn't quite as useful to them as the 1/2 plot of roadway they had before
the shift.

Whichever governmental body that has authority could theoretically solve this
by shifting all property lines to the right by 1/2 plot. This would line up
the spots on the Earth's spherical surface (the land estate) with the objects
held there by gravity and other forces (buildings and possessions).

\---

Of course, the complicating force here is Human Boredom; since these changes
happen over decades instead of a night, most people are not content to have
the problem solved logically, as most people see problems as tools they can
use as a reason to talk to other people.

~~~
publicfig
But what happens if due to sliding, one house moves over 1/2 plot but after
compression, the next property over moves over 1/4\. Now a mathematical and
spacial change based purely off of property lines is going to misrepresent the
actual change, while an adjustment based off of sliding objects may strip
someone of 1/4 a plot of land. It's not a simple "just move the plot" solution
unfortunately.

~~~
stephengillie
Thanks for clarifying some of the details that complicate my simple model.

I feel like Eminent Domain might be one recourse - simply pay the land owner
for the land that was lost. Though the land prices in California are so high
as to make this prohibitively expensive.

Another solution could be to take that 1/2 plot of land the city got, and give
1/4 of that to the squeezed landowner. But that solution wouldn't scale well -
I foresee a nightmare scenario where hundreds of people are trying to sell
their fractional ownership of a sandlot, except for one disgruntled group
member.

~~~
function_seven
I think the answer to this scenario is simpler. Tell them, "Sorry, God just
screwed you out of 1/4 of your land. Man that must suck. At least your
property taxes will be reduced!"

~~~
stephengillie
Yes, but which god? Ishtar? Most of them aren't _that_ fickle.

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pan69
This is an interesting photo:

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NqtW3VGYkuw/VGTYSD72MLI/AAAAAAAA_z...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NqtW3VGYkuw/VGTYSD72MLI/AAAAAAAA_zw/JEhpH7_OUt0/s1600/7-HollisterDrainWEB.jpg)

It immediately makes you wonder what happens "underground"..

~~~
ChuckMcM
No need to wonder, sewer lines that cross a fault line simply break. During my
time here in the SF Bay Area I know of at least three water line incidents
which were directly caused by water mains that were damaged by earth movement.
One in San Francisco in the late 90's created a huge sink hole as the water
washed out the under part of a street, one in Berkeley where the REI store
flooded, and one in Fremont which may have been a combination of fault motion
and land settling.

~~~
Houshalter
Yes but they know the fault is exactly there and moving at a constant rate,
it's possible they could plan for it.

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BinaryIdiot
That's really fascinating. I wonder how much a typical home can torque before
it becomes unsafe and how would you go about fixing it? I can't imagine it's
an easy repair. Can the house be lifted (as if it was going to be moved) and
the foundation re-done or does it pretty much need to be demolished?

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CapitalistCartr
If the house is a frame house on pilings, it's pretty easy to fix that way; if
it's a monolithic slab, block home, you're screwed. So it depends heavily on
the foundation and construction style.

~~~
freehunter
And I imagine if, at this point, you're not constructing houses with this
activity in mind, there's no one to blame but yourself. Sure, it sucks for
older houses, but if newer houses are being built more commonly now as the
article says, the problem should go away over time.

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bryondowd
I can't help but look at the roads and sidewalks and think there's a solution
that could be implemented there. I'm no engineer, but I expect that you could
install something along the fault line that allows the road to slide apart
without disruption. It seems like a waste to just keep repaving the same spot
over and over, just for it to crack again.

Maybe tear up a couple feet of pavement and put in two metal grates that can
slide past each other. That should at least buy you a decent amount of time,
until the road is so warped that the lanes don't line up.

~~~
ovis
The Alyeska pipeline in Alaska is built on rails just like this over the parts
near the Denali Fault.

[http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/2002/...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eqarchives/year/2002/TAPSatDenaliFault.gif)

~~~
pavel_lishin
I stared at that for far too long, waiting for the animation to start.

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Pxtl
So what happens to the underground infrastructure? Water, sewage, storm-
drains, gas?

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stephengoodwin
Do homeowner's insurance policies out in California cover ground movement?

~~~
Qworg
As a surprising aside, I found that homeowner's insurance in Hawaii covers
"destruction of house due to lava" but not "destruction of the entire area
around house, but not house due to lava".

There are people who have no roads, water, sewer or electric because their
house was turned into an island by lava flows - and they have no recourse to
do anything with their property (that they sometimes cannot even get to any
more).

~~~
function_seven
If the lava flow is active, built a drawbridge and have the best moat ever!

~~~
Xylakant
underfloor heating included if you're lucky, though that may be of little
appeal given the climate.

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ChuckMcM
One of my favorite nearby parks: [http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-trancos-open-
space-preserve-palo...](http://www.yelp.com/biz/los-trancos-open-space-
preserve-palo-alto) has the San Andreas fault going right through it. You can
see where the fence line has been deformed by creep.

On the plus side if it deforms you don't get a lot of energy buildup.

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trhway
reminded about what happens to buildings built on permafrost in Siberia on
shoddy quality foundations (i.e. for example the correct foundation should go
well deeper than summer thaw depth)

