KRT Wire | 12/22/2003 | Earthquake changes landscape along the coast: "Posted on Mon, Dec. 22, 2003

Earthquake changes landscape along the coast
BY LISA M. KRIEGER
Knight Ridder Newspapers

SAN JOSE, Calif. - (KRT) - The view from Hearst Castle got just grander.
In Monday morning's earthquake, the Santa Lucia Mountain Range that holds the landmark estate and adjacent towns shrugged its shoulders and then grew with a sudden jolt, probably one to four feet, sending a 6.5-magnitude reminder that California's central coast is a very young and restless region.
'What happened was a mountain-building motion,' said geophysicist Andrew Michael of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. 'It's what created the mountain range in the Bay Area - and more spectacularly, the mountains of the Big Sur coast.'
Seismic activity will continue over the next week or so, particularly to the south and east of the source of the earthquake, called the hypocenter, which has been located 4.7 miles underground in the rugged backcountry six miles northeast of San Simeon and 13 miles west of Lake Nacimiento. Scientists were still working Monday to pin down which fault caused the quake."
snip