The Big One may be overdue to hit California, but scientists near LA have found a new risk for the area during a major earthquake.
They claim that if a major tremor hits the area, it could plunge large parts of California into the sea almost instantly.
The
discovery was made after studying the Newport-Inglewood fault, which
has long been believed to be one of Southern California’s danger zones.
The fault runs under densely populated areas, from the Westside of Los Angeles to the Orange County coast.
Major earthquakes on the fault centuries
ago caused a parts of Seal Beach near the Orange County coast to sink
3ft in just seconds.
In total three
quakes over the last 2,000 years on nearby faults made ground just
outside Los Angeles city limits sink as much as 3ft.
Today
that could result in the area ending up at or below sea level, said
Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby, who worked with the paper´s
lead author, graduate student Robert Leeper.
The study showed that land within major Californian seismic faults could sink by 1.5 and three feet instantly.
The last known major quake occurred on the San Andreas fault in 1857.
Seismologists
estimate the 800 mile-long San Andreas, which runs most of the length
of the state, should see a large quake roughly every 150 years.
'It´s something that would happen relatively instantaneously,' Kirby said.
'Probably today if it happened, you would see seawater rushing in.'
The
study was limited to a roughly two-square-mile area inside the Seal
Beach National Wildlife Refuge, near the Newport-Inglewood and Rose
Canyon faults.
Kirby acknowledged
that the exact frequency of events on the faults is unclear, as is the
risk that another quake will occur in the near future.
The
study was limited to a roughly two-square-mile area inside the Seal
Beach National Wildlife Refuge, near the Newport-Inglewood and Rose
Canyon faults
The smallest of the
historic earthquakes was likely more intense than the strongest on
record in the area, the magnitude 6.3 Long Beach earthquake of 1933,
which killed 120 people and caused the inflation-adjusted equivalent of
nearly a billion dollars in damage.
Today, the survey site is sandwiched by the cities of Huntington Beach and Long Beach, home to over 600,000 people.
Nearby Los Angeles County has a population of 10 million.
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The official USGS forecast for
California earthquakes now predicts a 16 percent chance of an M7.5 quake
or larger on this section of the fault within the next 30 years. Shown
here is the chance of an earthquake across California over the next 30
years
CALIFORNIA AT RISK OF DEVASTATING MEGAQUAKE
A report from the U.S. Geological Survey has warned the risk of 'the big one' hitting California has increased dramatically.
Researchers
analysed the latest data from the state's complex system of active
geological faults, as well as new methods for translating these data
into earthquake likelihoods.
The
estimate for the likelihood that California will experience a magnitude 8
or larger earthquake in the next 30 years has increased from about 4.7%
to about 7.0%, they say.
'We are fortunate that seismic
activity in California has been relatively low over the past century,'
said Tom Jordan, Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center
and a co-author of the study.
'But we
know that tectonic forces are continually tightening the springs of the
San Andreas fault system, making big quakes inevitable.'
Kirby noted that the team could only collect soil core samples within the relatively undisturbed refuge.
He
said that taking deeper samples would shed light on the seismic record
even further back, potentially giving scientists more examples of
similar quakes to work from.
PLANS FOR 'THE BIG ONE'
Federal, state and military officials have been working together to draft plans to be followed when the 'Big One' happens.
These
contingency plans reflect deep anxiety about the potential gravity of
the looming disaster: upward of 14,000 people dead in the worst-case
scenarios, 30,000 injured, thousands left homeless and the region's
economy setback for years, if not decades.
As
a response, what planners envision is a deployment of civilian and
military personnel and equipment that would eclipse the response to any
natural disaster that has occurred so far in the US.
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This haunting photograph shows people
walking through rubble in San Francisco on 18 April 1906. Many people
are worried that the city and LA, for example, would look like this
again due to a massive quake
There
would be waves of cargo planes, helicopters and ships, as well as tens
of thousands of soldiers, emergency officials, mortuary teams, police
officers, firefighters, engineers, medical personnel and other
specialists.
'The response will be
orders of magnitude larger than Hurricane Katrina or Super Storm Sandy,'
said Lt. Col. Clayton Braun of the Washington State Army National
Guard.
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