Posted on 10/16/2019 11:44:55 AM PDT by BenLurkin
Tuesday’s quake occurred along a section that is notable for not having had dramatically large earthquakes in the modern historical record. Keith Knudsen, USGS geologist and deputy director of the agency’s Earthquake Science Center, called Tuesday’s quake “a garden variety San Andreas event” in this section.
“This is the 10th earthquake larger than magnitude 4 in the last 20 years in this area” within a radius of about six miles from Tuesday’s epicenter, Knudsen said.
The stretches of San Andreas north and south of the creeping section have acted very differently in the modern historical period, rupturing in the state’s largest catastrophic quakes on record.
About 300 miles of the northern San Andreas fault, between San Juan Bautista in San Benito County and Cape Mendocino, ruptured in the great 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco in shaking and fire. A 225-mile stretch of the southern San Andreas fault south of this creeping section, from Parkfield in Monterey County to Wrightwood in San Bernardino County, ruptured in the great 1857 earthquake, the most powerful event in modern Southern California history.
Both quakes are estimated to have been magnitude 7.8. The 90-mile creeping section between San Juan Bautista and Parkfield hasn’t seen a big earthquake in the modern record. Scientists are continuing to study whether big earthquakes can continue to rupture through the creeping section of the San Andreas.
U.S. Geological Survey published a hypothetical scenario of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on a 185-mile stretch of the southern San Andreas fault, from Imperial County to Los Angeles County, could kill 1,800 people, injure 5,000, displace some 500,000 to 1 million people from their homes and hobble the region economically for a generation.
(Excerpt) Read more at omaha.com ...
Oh, the nuzzlin’ joe offshoot fault?
Beat me to it! Creepy Joe Fault
Not the only area of California known for creeping.
Just saying.
Exactly
Mission San Juan Bautista has stood astride the San Andreas fault since 1797.
And held daily mass every day since founding.
It’s taken some hits, but survived with minor rebuilding.
You can walk the fault and see posted indicators of where the ground on each side was 20, 40, 100 years ago. They show both lateral and vertical movement.
North and south of there things are riskier.
Soon may be the time when mother nature renders CA expendable.
Well, besides "mother nature", there's always the chance that Spike will return and take out another chunk of CA like he did with Sunnyvale...
38-thousand inhabitants, forty-three churches, a small private college, a zoo, a museum, and twelve gothic cemeteries... All tragically gone and "mother nature" was completely innocent...
The Spanish brought the earthquakes with them. They are all their fault.
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