3-16-16

 

MIA DE GRAAF FOR DAILYMAIL The long-overdue earthquake set to hit southern California could be far worse than expected, a new study suggests.
There is widespread consensus that millions will be killed or displaced when – not if – the San Andreas fault ruptures.

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Overdue earthquake in California set to be FAR worse than expected, study warns as research suggests TWO faultlines are set to erupt at the same time

• Southern California is long overdue a quake along San Andreas fault
• It last erupted in 1812, devastating the region, could hit again imminently
• But new evidence suggests the San Jacinto fault will erupt simultaneously
• If true, it would mean authorities have dramatically underestimated how many people will be affected by the natural disaster

The long-overdue earthquake set to hit southern California could be far worse than expected, a new study suggests.

There is widespread consensus that millions will be killed or displaced when – not if – the San Andreas fault ruptures.

Now, a geophysicist claims there is a strong chance this quake will coincide with one along the adjacent San Jacinto faultline, which runs through more heavily-populated cities.

If true, it would mean authorities have dramatically underestimated how many people will be affected by the natural disaster.

But there is no way to predict when such an event might occur. 

Evidence uncovered by Julian Lozos, an assistant geophysics professor at California State University, suggests the two faultlines erupted simultaneously in 1812, devastating the region between San Diego and San Buenvaventura.

If that happened once, Lozos said, there is a strong chance it can happen again.

‘Looking at old earthquakes in general is really a good way to figure out what faults are capable of doing,’ Lozos wrote in his paper published on Saturday in the journal Science Advances.

Previously, geologists thought a quake shook San Jacinto shortly before the devastating San Andreas quake on December 8, 1812.

However, Lozos has concluded the rupture along the San Jacinto faultline was in fact the starting point.

Lozos analyzed historical data on the 1812 San Andreas rupture, testing four different scenarios of where it could have started.

He believes it started in Mystic Lake, ripping north up the San Jacinto faultline until it jumped up into the dry creek that runs parallel.

San Andreas runs 810 miles from Bombay Beach near San Diego up to Cape Mendocino, which is 300 miles north west of Sacramento. 

San Jacinto runs 180 miles through San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego.  

Though the findings cannot be proved definitively, it presents a new element for scientists to acknowledge as they attempt to advise the West Coast on how to brace for the quake.  

‘This precedent carries the implications that similar joint ruptures are possible in the future and that the San Jacinto fault plays a more significant role in seismic hazard in southern California than previously considered,’ Lozos writes in the report. 

Indeed, University of California professor Lisa Grant Ludwig told CNN the region is not prepared for such a situation. 

‘In southern California, much of our infrastructure was built to withstand a rupture of either the San Andreas or San Jacinto faults, but not both at the same time,’ she explained. 

Meanwhile, scientists are also working to plot the route of the tsunami expected to hit the West Coast when the Cascadia faultline – buried in the Pacific Ocean – finally ruptures.

This quieter cousin of the San Andreas Fault in California is far more dangerous, and could make itself known at any moment.

Running from Northern California to British Columbia, the Cascadia Subduction Zone can deliver a quake that’s many times stronger than San Andreas.

Seismologists say a full rupture of the more than 600-mile-long offshore fault and an ensuing tsunami is now only a matter of when.

‘Cascadia can make an earthquake almost 30 times more energetic than the San Andreas to start with,’ Chris Goldfinger, a professor of geophysics at Oregon State University told CNN.

‘Then it generates a tsunami at the same time, which the side-by-side motion of the San Andreas can’t do’.