"There’s a rule to seismology that will probably come as a disappointment to many — earthquakes don’t actually reduce the risk of future quakes; they increase them.
“Every earthquake actually increases the probability of more earthquakes,” Page said.
In fact, earthquake scientists actually model quakes like disease epidemics. “It’s based on the idea on how a contagion spreads to a population,” she said. “Earthquakes are like that … in general, if there are a lot of earthquakes going on, it’s more probable for a large earthquake to go on.”
While earthquakes do relieve stress to some areas around them, we become less safe after earthquakes because they “redistribute the stress and can push other faults in the area to failure,” Page said.
In the example above, the areas stressed by the 1872 Owens Valley earthquake are shown along with all earthquakes of magnitude 4 or higher that have occurred since 1985 when enhanced measurment became possible. You can easily see that the stressed areas are where the most seismic activity has taken place, including the recent quakes in the vicinity of Ridgecrest.