The “Big One” to Hit California by 2037?
Posted by Matt Ortega | April 14, 2008The likelihood that California will be rocked by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake or higher by 2037 is 99.7 percent, says a new report by the U.S. Geological Survey. Southern California faces a higher risk than Northern California, 97 percent to 93 percent.
According to the report, the likelihood of a 7.6 magnitude earthquake striking in the next thirty years is 46 percent — the Los Angeles area at 67 percent and San Francisco Bay Area predicted at 63 percent.
In northern California, the fault line with the highest likely source of future earthquakes is not either sections of the more infamous San Andreas fault, but rather, the Hayward-Rodgers Creek fault. The southern section of the San Andreas is at the highest risk in southern California.
The northern section of the Calaveras fault runs right past the Danville home that I lived in for junior high and high school from 1996-2002, and is nested east of the Hayward fault though scientists believe these two are connected horizontally deep below the surface.
The last time a jolt this size rattled California was the 1994 Northridge disaster, which killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage.
“It basically guarantees it’s going to happen,” said Ned Field, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and lead author of the report. [emphasis added]
From time to time, when the Bay Area is struck with a moderate earthquake, it gets the local media thrown into a tizzy about the impending “big one.” For someone who wishes, at some point in life, to make my native Bay Area my permanent home once again, the prospects of a devastating earthquake worry me greatly.
Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
