Free Republic

Monday’s largest quake hit at about 2:08 p.m. at the south tip of the sea, about 8 miles northwest of Calipatria and 25 miles north of El Centro, USGS said. People reported feeling strong shaking at the epicenter and weak movement as far away as San Diego, Cathedral City and El Centro. Swarms are common in the Imperial Valley, and past swarms in the area have stayed active for about a week on average. Those include a 1981 swarm around Westmorland that included a 5.8 magnitude quake, and a 2012 swarm near Brawley that included a magnitude 5.4 temblor. The...

The questions were coming fast and frantic: How strong was the earthquake? Was it on the San Andreas? Is the Big One coming? A massive temblor had struck near Joshua Tree shortly before 10 p.m., causing buildings to sway all the way to Las Vegas. As the public braced for more shaking, the media flocked to Caltech that night in 1992. One woman seemed to have all the answers. It was a magnitude 6.1, explained U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones, and the odds of a larger quake in the next three days stood at 15%. She shifted her weight...

It'll be bad. Hurricane Katrina bad. Likely worse. Thousands dead. Buildings collapsed. Freeways severed. Scientists for the first time are figuring out in great detail just how bad it will be when the southern section of the San Andreas Fault, roughly between Palmdale and the Salton Sea, cuts loose. "One of our goals is not to say, `We're all gonna die,"' said Lucy Jones of the California Institute of Technology, who is leading the effort. "It's, `Here's how you're going to die if you don't change anything."' Scientists, academics, utility companies and emergency planners have jumped aboard the project so...