The Big One:
Prepare now for an earthquake by appreciating the science behind it
By Alison Elsner For DMHN
T
he not so good news: the Coachella Valley will slide north of San Francisco towards the Aleutian Trench. The much better news: it won’t happen for 20 million years. We hear a lot of doom and gloom about possible temblor scenarios. As
natural disasters go, our desert has a pretty fair shake, so to speak. The Midwest deals with twisters, and the Gulf Coast has its hurricanes. The main difference is that those occurrences are considerably more predictable. However, they also come around with much more frequency, and their force can be devastating – as we’ve seen. To be prepared for a major earth-
quake in our area, it’s important to understand the geology involved. Eliminating the sensationalism and focusing on the reality are key to moving past the event and sustaining ourselves. The San Andreas Fault began to form about 30 million years ago, however the main southern section has only existed for about 5 million years.
The San Andreas is a right lateral strike-slip transform fault, which means its two plates, the Pacific Plate and the North American plate, move horizontal to each other. The fault line runs 800 miles from Hollister, in northern California, snaking its way on and off shore throughout the San Francisco and Santa Cruz regions. Amazingly, the central segment of Continues on page 6 >>
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