In a study published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, four areas of the San Andreas Fault System in the San Francisco Bay Area have accumulated enough energy to produce major earthquakes.
The study estimates the Rodgers Creek, northern Calaveras and southern Green Valley faults are overdue for a major earthquake. Those three faults have not ruptured in a major earthquake of at least magnitude 6.7 since the reporting of earthquakes by local inhabitants. The southern Hayward fault, which produced a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in 1868, is also its due date.
(via CBS San Francisco)
They just need to do some fracking out there to relieve the stress.
ReplyDeleteGreat comment. Made me laugh out loud! But there could be some truth to it. Others have suggested that the geography in southern California has become somewhat gravelly from numerous fractures and this tends to mute the transmission of larger quakes.
DeleteThe San Andreas fault line is the dividing between the North American and Pacific plates. Fracking has nothing to do with plate tectonics. The "big one" on San Andreas could potentially separate the area to the west from the continent of North America. Call this Secession by nature.
ReplyDelete