Talk:1952 Kern County earthquake

1952 Kern County earthquake has been listed as one of the Geography and places good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
April 20, 2014	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on March 4, 2013.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that precarious rock formations were evaluated to estimate the peak ground acceleration of the 1952 Kern County earthquake?

A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on July 21, 2022.

Earthquakes Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Earthquakes, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of earthquakes, seismology, plate tectonics, and related subjects on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EarthquakesWikipedia:WikiProject EarthquakesTemplate:WikiProject EarthquakesWikiProject Earthquakes articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

California Mid‑importance

	California portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject California, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of California on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CaliforniaWikipedia:WikiProject CaliforniaTemplate:WikiProject CaliforniaCalifornia articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

How many casualties?

The opening paragraph says 12 killed and 18 injured; the infobox says 14 casualties. — crism (talk) 21:51, 5 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Largest, strongest

If there is a difference in the terms "largest" and "strongest," it would be good to define them.

As it stands, the years between the present quake and the last "strongest" and "largest" differ substantially. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.175.109.15 (talk) 16:21, 7 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:1952 Kern County earthquake/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Secret (talk · contribs) 14:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'll be reviewing this article sometime this week. Secret ^account 14:57, 29 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I've been working on the article again after making the nomination, after I found some additional sources. There's a bit more to come this weekend. I'll check in again when the bulk of it has been added. Dawnseeker2000 13:49, 11 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok I was planning to review it today as I was extremely busy but I'll wait until Monday. Thanks Secret ^account 18:24, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect, that should give me plenty of time to wrap up these final hour additions and improvements. Thanks, Dawnseeker2000 19:06, 12 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done with adding material and is ready for review. Quite a bit was added in the last few weeks, with more sections and finer detail. More was added to the lead to reflect the new text, and an aftershock table was added. I feel like the new aspects of the story are now in there, but the flow is only OK. A few of the existing sources were replaced with new sources and I'm sure there are areas that can be improved, Dawnseeker2000 14:31, 14 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewing, great work as always ....

"though this intensity rating was not indicative of the majority of damage in the area" Sounds like original research in an already extremely long sentence, this can be cut.

Done The second half of that long sentence is a preview / summary of the second (shorter) paragraph in the Earthquake section. Not many earthquakes reach level XI in intensity, and it's important to clarify that that intensity was not widespread. I broke up the sentence, refined what it summarizes, and moved it down in the paragraph. Dawnseeker2000 04:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Bakersfield is mentioned in the lead and the aftermath as being significantly damaged by the earthquake, but nothing on the Damage section, maybe expand a bit or move from other parts of the article.

Done Found a bit in the Los Angeles Times article that briefly discusses the mild to moderate effects of the mainshock, and I've added a summary of what it says to the Damage section. Bakersfield seemed to be hit worse with the August aftershock. Dawnseeker2000 04:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"In statements made in the July 22 Los Angeles Times the shock was compared to the 1857 Fort Tejon event." - needs a comma.

Done Dawnseeker2000 04:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why the link to the Kern County Fire Department as see also, but nothing in the text.

Done The source didn't mention the fire department, but when I added the link during the initial expansion in 2013, the mid-2013 version of that article did have more information on the event. It no longer does, so I've removed the link. Dawnseeker2000 04:10, 22 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No close paraphrasing concerns, all sources are reliable and the few online sources matches the text given. Images are free. Secret ^account 20:28, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I passed the article, none of my concerns really prevent it from getting good article status. Thanks Secret ^account 23:23, 20 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I'm not at home right now so can't dive in and make any of the changes, but will work on it tomorrow evening after work, and will reply here with the details. Dawnseeker2000 01:05, 21 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tunnel pictures?

Have you seen any of the pictures of the damage in the tunnel? There's one that is especially dramatic: the wall apparently lifted up, and the rail slipped under it before the wall came down again, making it look the rail just runs into the concrete wall. I don't know what the copyright status is, but it would seem worth trying to get permission. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 20:12, 24 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that one is part of the Steinbrugge Collection that's available on the NISEE archive. I've used their text resources for several years now, but the (high resolution) pictures are copyrighted and aren't available for use here. Unfortunate, because some are spectacular. Dawnseeker2000 04:18, 25 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The link that Dawnseeker2000 provided didn't work any more. I also remember seeing that photo, so I poked around. You can find a thumbnail for it here - it's in the Steinbrugge collection; look for "Image-B1202." Oaklandguy (talk) 06:29, 25 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Resources

There is an excellent resource I did not see mentioned in the article, Bulletin 171 from the California Dept. of Mines, with a number of articles covering various aspects of the quake. Can be found here. Caution: the pdf is a big file. Has a number of pictures of the railroad damage, but not particularly good quality. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:35, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Forgot to mention that there was a LOT more damage to the railroad than "two tunnels", and that it was closed for 25 days. Which is pretty significant as this is the Southern Pacific's main route into northern California from the east, and the Santa Fe's only access to northern California. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 00:46, 2 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for posting this. That does look to be a good resource. I'm finding similar situations (missed sources) for other articles that I've expanded and I'm feeling like I could focus just on the California events and never run out of work. Dawnseeker2000 03:41, 10 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Epicenter Geocoordinates?

The USGS page for this earthquake ( https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci3319401#executive ) gives an epicenter about 9 miles northeast of what this page and the GeoHack page has. The reference cited (#4) gives a whole list of preliminary locations (some of which end in .0000 showing how coarse the measurements were). I've not edited the page because I don't know how that works with the GeoHack link (is it automatic, or does the GeoHack page need to be updated also?). If the coordinates are updated then reference #4 also needs to be updated to reflect the USGS source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Xapie128 (talk • contribs) 18:28, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]