Cathryn...Mendocino area is a triple junction...the San Andreas fault starts up there...and extends south along the coast, just offshore and just onshore, I think (don't have my maps handy). So, you don't move to close to the San Andreas Fault to avoid quakes. I will post soon on something I learned from ray Weldon et al. in a paper, and his talk at SCEC, later. I believe that the official probablity of a big quake on the northern San Andreas fault is really low.....but there is reason to think that this is not correct....more later...Chris