Hi Manda. Living in any building that had been constructed in the 1920s is not exactly my cup of tea. While most buildings of good solid construction can withstand a moderate strike slip type quake and maybe even a strong strike slip type, a quake cause by a thrust fault is a whole different quake.

The building codes of ten or more years ago didn’t take into account the kind of motion seen with a thrust fault, which is upward. In other words everything is tossed into the air. Most buildings are built to withstand a swaying motion, side to side and in that respect they do fairly well.

I haven’t found very much in the way of new data for the fault, but did find this which should give you a better idea as to what you might expect from this fault.

The 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which is thought of have occurred on this fault appears to have ruptured only about 10 percent of the Puente Hills fault, it's hard to predict when the next earthquake might occur along this system. The researchers estimate that the likelihood of any one fault segment rupturing, which could generate an earthquake with a magnitude between 6.5 and 6.6, is once in 250 to 1,000 years. Take Care…Don in creepy town

This article is by J. Shaw, 10-19-1999

“In the east, the Puente Hills blind-thrust system defines the southern extent (subsurface) of the Coyote and Santa Fe Springs anticlines, which often does not correspond with the most pronounced topographic slope break. Thus much Pliocene and younger structure (inc. faults) in the Coyote and Santa Fe Springs anticlines lie in the hanging wall of this young fault. The Puente Hills thrust is distinct in trend, age, depth, and dip from the Norwalk fault as defined in the subsurface (e.g., Wright, 1991); it is possible, however, that some young surficial deformations attributed to the Norwalk fault in the Coyote Hills area are related to the Puente Hills system. Herein may lie a chicken-or-the-egg debate. Moreover, based on the linkage of the Puente Hills blind-thrust and the Whittier Narrows earthquake, the northern splays of the Whittier fault also lie in the hanging wall of the thrust. The main strike-slip aftershock apparently ruptured one of these splays - the rupture terminating downward into the thrust plane (note the hanging wall seismicity in Shaw & Shearer, 1999; Fig. 4). A comparison of Quaternary uplift rates on either side of the Whittier fault may help to determine if a similar relationship exists elsewhere, and what types of deep fault architectures (i.e., interactions between strike-slip and thrust faults) are permissible.”

“In the west, the Puente Hills thrust extends to at least Western Ave., and may correspond with what Yeats in his SCEC poster has called the "less active" Las Cienegas trend. However, the portion of the Las Cienegas fault (at Murphy Area and Fourth Area fields) mapped by Schieder et al. (1996) clearly lies in the hanging wall of the Puente Hills thrust. In seismic data along Western Ave., folds (and fault-plane reflections?) related to both the Puente Hills and Las Cienegas faults are apparent - thus the two faults are distinct from one another. If the Las Cienegas fault dips steeply, as depicted by Schieder et al., 1996 and Yeats), I would suggest that it soles into, or is cut by, the Puente Hills thrust system. If we wish to argue that the two faults are linked in an en echelon system, we must document a similar age and slip history for the faults (Bob, what is the evidence for the Qt. activity of the Las Cienegas fault, independent from the monocline that you associate with a deeper level of faulting?).”