San Andreas ‘Quake Swarm’ Has Cali Residents Fearing The ‘Big One’ Is Imminent
Yesterday morning a series of 10 earthquakes struck Monterey County, California along the San Andreas fault line and has Cali residents increasingly concerned that the “Big One” could be next. The quakes, the biggest of which measured 4.6 on the Richter scale, hit near Salinas, California but were felt 90 miles away in San Francisco. Per SF Gate:
A 4.6-magnitude earthquake rattled Monterey County on Monday and was felt more than 90 miles away in San Francisco, officials said.
The quake hit at 11:31 a.m. about 13 miles northeast of Gonzales, near Salinas, and was followed by nine smaller aftershocks, with the largest measuring magnitude 2.8, said Annemarie Baltay, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park.
There were no reports of injuries or damage.
Baltay said the quake occurred on the San Andreas Fault, close to an area where the Calaveras Fault branches off. The quake happened at a depth of about 4 miles.
While a seismologist for the US Geological Survey, Annemarie Baltay, dismissed the recent quakes as part of ‘normal seismic activity’, the Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center offered a slightly different opinion to the LA Times last year:
“Any time there is significant seismic activity in the vicinity of the San Andreas fault, we seismologists get nervous,”said Thomas H. Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center, “because we recognize that the probability of having a large earthquake goes up.”
As seismic activity drops, the probability of having a large earthquake also decreases.
Experts said it’s important to understand that the chance of the swarm triggering a big one, while small, was real.
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