While California's major cities have been spared significant earthquakes in the last 30 years, experts warn that this lull could be misleading. The article highlights past catastrophic earthquakes and emphasizes the long-term risk posed by large quakes like the potential 'Big One' on the San Andreas Fault.
The ruins of the 14 Freeway at its intersection with Interstate 5 after the Northridge earthquake on Jan. 17. 1994.
The magnitude 7.8 ShakeOut quake would be more than 12 times bigger than the Northridge quake as measured on a seismogram. But a shows that the ShakeOut scenario quake would be 45 times stronger, in terms of energy released, than Northridge.
Los Angeles followed suit in 2015, and also ordered “non-ductile,” or brittle, concrete buildings to be retrofitted. Cities in Southern California that have recently passed retrofit laws include Torrance, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Culver City, West Hollywood and Beverly Hills. In Northern California, they include Oakland, Berkeley, Fremont and Mill Valley.
The magnitude 4.7 quake just north of Malibu on Thursday was the 14th seismic sequence so far this year in Southern California with at least one earthquake of magnitude 4 or higher, Jones said. That tally broke a record for the last 65 years. So the recent activity does not offer any hints of when the next large, destructive earthquake will occur, according to USGS seismologist Susan Hough.
Back then, “to figure out where an earthquake was, you had to get a seismologist to come into the lab and look, pull out the records and compute it,” Jones said.
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