The San Andreas Fault is the most potentially dangerous of all continental faults.since it extends over more than a thousand kilometers, covering the territory of California, in the US, and Baja California, in Mexico.
Every time an earthquake occurs in this area, seismologists around the world wonder if it is the ‘Big One’, a phenomenon that occurs every 150 years, but has not happened again for 300 years, so experts predict that it could happen at any time, what is it about?
What is the ‘Big One’?
According to the ‘BBC’ agency, the so-called ‘Big One’ refers to an earthquake of great magnitude that, eventually, will have to occur. This fact worries seismology experts, since they consider that when it occurs, it will produce catastrophic effects. They have also expressed that -according to their calculations- this should already have happened.
Why are they called ‘faults’?
The faults are a series of regions where the tectonic plates – which belong to the earth’s crust closest to the surface – meet and suffer fractures, causing the displacement of the stone blocks of the lithosphere. -located below us- is modified. When a fault is created, it is due to the fact that the resistance of the materials that make it up is overcome, as a result of the force exerted by the telluric movements.
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In reality, continental faults are very common and always occur at the edge of each tectonic plate. After a fault is generated, the lubrication that previously existed between one layer and another is lost, leaving only a cluster of rough rocks on top of each other, which will cause -from time to time- after accumulating a good degree of energy, to be released through seismic waves that we can perceive from the surface.
And although there are types of active faults and others of an inactive class; the active ones -in addition- are classified in two; seismic and non-seismic. The San Andreas fault, above the Ramon, Altyn Tagh and Motagua faults, is the largest of the active seismic faults and, therefore, the most potentially dangerous.
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The experts who have studied this fault They assure that after more than half of its foundations broke, it caused the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, with a magnitude of 7.8 degrees.
On April 18, 1906, an earthquake that triggered a fire almost completely destroyed the city of San Francisco. It is estimated that during the earthquake that occurred in San Francisco in 1906, 700 people died and another 250,000 were homeless. pic.twitter.com/Pssg1DJdic
— History and Data (@HistoriayDatos) April 18, 2022
This episode destroyed a large part of the American city and caused the death of more than 30 thousand lives. According to the seismologists, an earthquake of great magnitude would take place from time to time, in a periodicity of 105 years -between one earthquake and another-, that is why they are concerned, especially with regard to the southern part, since for more than 300 years, in 1700, there has not been an important movement in the area.
In this regard, a group of specialists declared during the National Earthquake Conference, held in 2016, that the southern section of the San Andreas fault is “charged and ready” to cause a major tremor. Due to the imminence of the phenomenon, seismology has been in charge of creating mathematical models to measure the magnitude that this earthquake could reach. According to these calculations, the seismicity of this event would tentatively be 7.8 degrees.
El Universal / Mexico (GDA)
You can also read:
– Mexico: strong earthquake of magnitude 7.6 shook the center of the country.
– Videos: this is how the strong earthquake of 7.6 in Mexico was experienced.
– The US issues a tsunami alert after the 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Mexico.
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