Hi All. Is the sleeping giant San Andreas and its little brothers starting to wake up? According to David Schwartz of the USGS we may have 1, 2 or 3 years before the next major quake. We don’t have 15, 20 or 30 years.

The Bay Area isn’t prepared to the next major and even if it did occur 20 years from now it’s doubtful it will be anymore prepared then it is now. The residents of the Bay Area have never experienced a major quake so they have no idea as to what to expect. Some say that because they came through the Loma Prieta quake just fine there’s no reason to think the next major quake won’t be any different. The problem with this thinking is that the Loma Prieta quake wasn’t in the Bay Area and was just a drop in the bucket to a major quake. It can’t even begin to compare to a major quake.

The Bay Area isn’t ready for the next major quake. Not by a long shot. Things being the way they are I probably won’t be around when it happens so I’m not going to get the chance to say “I told you so” so I will say it now. I told you so. Take Care…Don in creepy town

Some quakes are so powerful they leave the earth speechless. The Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, a massive 7.8 quake, shook the region so violently that scientists believe it cast a calming "shadow" over a half-dozen parallel faults, sending the entire Bay Area into a long seismic sleep.

In the seventy years leading up to the catastrophic day, at least fifteen quakes measuring 6.0 to 6.9 slammed the Bay Area. But since the morning of April 18, 1906, when the ground convulsed for nearly a minute, there has been precious little activity -- nothing exceeding a 6.5 on the infamous San Andreas; nor the Calaveras, which flanks I-680 through Pleasanton and Danville. The Hayward Fault, which cuts through the East Bay Hills, has remained essentially idle. Ditto the San Gregorio, Rodgers Creek, Concord-Green Valley, and Mount Diablo faults. These giants have been slumbering in relative peace for the better part of a century -- which is striking given that the region's soaring hills and deep valleys were formed by countless millennia of seismic upheaval. "The Bay Area has the highest density of active faults per square mile of any urban center in the country, and on a long-term basis it has the highest amount of earthquake energy released per square mile of any urban center in the country," says David Schwartz, a geologist with the US Geological Survey. "So we're really kind of living at ground zero."

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-02-16/news/feature.html

For Petra. Copy and paste the link in the address bar. You should be able to open the link from there.

• Where The Fault Lies