Seismologists' favorite sidewalk destroyed by California city

City workers in Hayward, California have accidentally destroyed a slice of sidewalk that for years has acted as an ideal indicator of the tectonic shifts taking place under the state. The curb at the corner of Rose and Prospect sat right across California's Hayward fault, and became a site of pilgrimage for seismologists and geologists over the year, its growing offset showing how the street — and the state — was being pulled apart by the movements of the Earth's crust. But Hayward's city council didn't see the geological feature, looking at the curb instead as a piece of broken road, and replacing it without warning in June.

"This is just devastating news," the US Geological Survey's Ken Hudnut said, with Andrew Alden — an Oakland...