Hi Jim. It appears that the scenario you speak of may already happened. Take Care…Don in creepy town

On Sunday June 28, 1992, at 4:58 A.M a M>7.4 temblor centered near the small desert community of Landers, approximately 110 miles east of Los Angeles and 30 miles north of Palm Springs. The earthquake was felt as far away as New Mexico, Colorado, and Idaho.

At 8:04 A.M. a second M>6.5 earthquake, centered near Big Bear Lake in the San Bernardino Mountains, struck approximately 20 miles west of the initial shock.

About two months earlier, on April 22, 1992, an M>6.1 earthquake ten miles south of Joshua Tree shook the same communities causing minor structural damage. This event now appears to have been a foreshock of the June 28 earthquakes.

A 43 mile long surface rupture zone begins about 2 miles north of Yucca Valley and extends north-northwest to within approximately 10 miles southeast of Barstow. The observed right-lateral slip was about 10 feet in the Landers area. The maximum observed lateral slip was about 21 feet on the Emerson Fault.

Vertical offsets of up to four feet accompanied the lateral offsets. It is estimated that about 25% of the surface ruptures occurred along previously unmapped faults or the projections of mapped faults.

The 8:04 A.M. Big Bear Earthquake occurred on a separate, previously unknown northeast trending left-lateral strike-slip fault that intersects the Camp Rock-Emerson Fault.

The two events of June 28, 1992, demonstrate that powerful earthquakes are possible in areas previously thought not capable of releasing such massive energy. The Landers-Big Bear sequence has also shown that earthquakes on one fault system are capable of triggering large tremors on other faults.

• Landers/Big Bear Quakes