Valley Fever Outbreak
An unusual effect of the Northridge earthquake was an outbreak of coccidioidomycosis (Valley fever), a respiratory disease caused by inhaling airborne spores. The number of cases (203) in Ventura County was roughly 10 times the normal rate in the eight weeks following the earthquake and three people died. It is thought that the spores were carried in large clouds of dust created by seismically triggered landslides. Most of the cases occurred immediately downwind of the landslides.
Read more about this topic: 1994 Northridge Earthquake
Famous quotes containing the words valley and/or fever:
“To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age. In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked.... In other words, I don’t improve, in further words, once a bum always a bum. I fear the disease is incurable.”
—John Steinbeck (1902–1968)