California may be on the brink of a monster earthquake, as experts warn the San Andreas fault is ‘ready to go’
by: Isabelle Z.
NaturalNews.com
Monday, May 09, 2016
As Californians go about their daily lives, many of them remain blissfully unaware of the threat lurking in the background: a monster earthquake that scientists say is long overdue.
Southern California Earthquake Center director, Thomas Jordan, remarked that the fault has been unusually uneventful since 1857, when the last big earthquake to hit a southern section struck the area from Monterey County to the San Gabriel Mountains near L.A., in a quake that registered 7.9 on the Richter scale.
Scientists are now saying that arrival of the type of massive earthquake that normally strikes every few hundred years is just a matter of time, and it could leave thousands or even tens of thousands of people dead or homeless in its wake.
Jordan told the National Earthquake Conference in Long Beach, “The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight and the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go.”
He added that other areas of the fault, which measures 810 miles in total, are also highly vulnerable. Scientists believe that the Pacific plate should move northwest of the North American plate about 16 feet every century in order to relieve stress, but this has not been happening, which means that stress has been building up to unsustainable levels for more than 100 years.
Jordan feels that the state needs to prepare itself for such a devastating event, and commended the city of Los Angeles for its plans to reinforce the city’s older buildings made of concrete, as well is its telecommunications networks. The fault does not run under the city itself, but could rock it nevertheless.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, a 7.8-magnitude quake could cause as many as 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries, and damages totaling $200 billion, in the course of just two minutes.
An earthquake of this magnitude has not been seen since 1857, when a quake that started in Parkfield, Monterey County, worked its way down the fault for 185 miles, before heading east from Los Angeles. The power of the quake caused it to liquefy soil and destroy countless buildings, although it is important to note that the areas affected were not nearly as built up at that time as they are now.
Next quake could be even worse than predicted
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