California is sitting on ‘time bomb’ which could cause major destruction at any point
Each year, the southern California region experiences around 10,000 earthquakes, certainly making it one of the most prone areas to suffer from the tectonic hazard.
While 10,000 may sound like an awful lot, most of them are actually quite small and not even felt by Americans.
Only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, while around 15-20 are greater than a 4.0 magnitude.
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Despite that, the state of California is said to be sitting on a 'time bomb', which could cause major destruction at any time.
The 'tectonic time bomb' comes in the form of the San Andreas Fault, which sits through California where the Pacific Plate comes face-to-face with the North American Plate.
Boundaries between plates are often where earthquakes will occur, and the 1,200-kilometer San Andreas Fault is no different.
While all plate boundaries provide a lot of worries for geologists, the San Andreas Fault is very much one of grave concern for the experts.
A rupture in the fault was the cause of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which caused mass destruction in the US city.
The event tragically killed some 3,000 people, destroying most of San Francisco, and also leaving half of residents homeless.
Such a tragic event you'd think would be a one-off event, but unfortunately that is not the case with the San Andreas Fault.
In 1857, a rupture of the San Andreas Fault in central and southern California caused the Fort Tejon earthquake, often dubbed as one of the most deadliest earthquakes in US history.
Despite the advancements in technologies in recent years, earthquakes are still pretty hard to predict.
Nonetheless, geologists estimate that the San Andreas Fault likely causes destructive and significant every couple of centuries.
So, if those predictions are to be believed, it is only a matter of time before a destructive earthquake will occur on the San Andreas Fault.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) website states: "Based on models taking into account the long-term rate of slip on the San Andreas fault and the amount of offset that occurred on the fault in 1906, the best guess is that 1906-type earthquakes occur at intervals of about 200 years. Because of the time needed to accumulate slip equal to a 20-foot [6-meter] offset, there is only a small chance (about 2 percent) that such an earthquake could occur in the next 30 years."
Considering the amount of people living in California, this has the potential to be truly devastating.
Callum Jones