Crime and Scary Water

A friend and I went hiking (sorta) at a Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. It was spookier than a ghost town graveyard. Local signage depicted happy families frolicking in the grass, but no one was there. The birds (if there were any) were silent. No sound except the ambient clank of the oil pumps on a distant hill.
We finally found others at the lake (which stood behind a sign saying it was "closed"). Maybe the odor had something to do with the closure. I'll bet there's more dead things in there than in the La Brea Tar Pits.

The lake isn't the first scary body of water in the area. In the fifties a large reservoir stood just to the east. Nobody concluded that building a reservoir on an earthquake fault might be a bad idea. Nearby oil drilling made the land even more unstable. In 1963 the reservoir cracked open, pouring a 50 foot wave into the neighborhood below. Five people were killed and 277 houses were destroyed.
Here's a pic:



The former reservoir is now part of the empty, creepy park. You can still see a slight depression at where it was. Also note that most of the "spill area" was never rebuilt.


Back at my end of the park, I saw this sign:

Huh?
Does anyone really think some would-be criminal sees it and thinks, Hey, it's an anti-crime zone! I guess I'll have to do my dirtywork somewhere else.

I feel so much safer with that sign. Was it erected by a descendant of the dopes who built the reservoir? Will they "protect" the area from future calamity with a sign like this?