MAJOR CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKES MAJOR CALIFORNIA EARTHQUAKES Earthquakes are a fact of life in California. Listed here are only a few of the largest events, but tremors are recorded daily throughout the state. Click on the following links for more information: TIME: January 17, 1994 / 4:30:55 am PST LOCATION: 20 miles west-northwest of Los Angeles MAGNITUDE: 6.7 At 4:30 am, on January 17, 1994, residents of the greater Los Angeles area were rudely awakened by the strong shaking of the Northridge earthquake. This was the first earthquake to strike directly under an urban area of the United States since the 1933 Long Beach earthquake. The earthquake occurred on a blind thrust fault, and produced the strongest ground motions ever instrumentally recorded in an urban setting in North America. Damage was wide-spread, sections of major freeways collapsed, parking structures and office buildings collapsed, and numerous apartment buildings suffered irreparable damage.

Damage to wood-frame apartment houses was very widespread in the San Fernando Valley and Santa Monica areas, especially to structures with "soft" first floor or lower-level parking garages. The high accelerations, both vertical and horizontal, lifted structures off of their foundations and/or shifted walls laterally. LOMA PRIETA EARTHQUAKE TIME: October 17, 1989 / 5:04 pm PST LOCATION: 10 miles northeast of the city of Santa Cruz, California, MAGNITUDE: 7.1 The Loma Prieta earthquake occurred in the greater San Francisco Bay Area in California. It is popularly nicknamed the World Series Quake because it occurred during the World Series, which happened to match up the Bay Area's two Major League Baseball teams. The earthquake lasted for 15 seconds Portion of the Cypress Street Viaduct, Interstate 880, in Oakland collapsed. This was a major earthquake which caused severe damage as far as 70 miles away; most notably in San Francisco, Oakland, the San Francisco Peninsula, and in areas closer to the epicenter in the communities of Santa Cruz, the Monterey Bay, Watsonville, and Los Gatos.

There were at least 63 deaths (some say 66) and 3,757 injuries as a result of this earthquake. The quake also caused an estimated $6 billion in property damage, the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history at the time. It was the largest earthquake to occur on the San Andreas Fault since the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. TIME: February 9, 1971 / 6:01 am PST LOCATION: 34° 24.67' N, 118° 24.04' W MAGNITUDE: 6.6 Also known as the Sylmar Earthquake, this earthquake occurred on the San Fernando fault zone, a zone of thrust faulting which broke the surface in the Sylmar-San Fernando Area. The total surface rupture was roughly 19 km (12 miles) long. The maximum slip was up to 2 meters (6 feet). The earthquake caused over $500 million in property damage and 65 deaths. Most of the deaths occurred when the Veteran's Administration Hospital collapsed.

Several other hospitals, including the Olive View Community Hospital in Sylmar (pictured below) suffered severe damage. Newly constructed freeway overpasses also collapsed, in damage scenes similar to those which occurred 23 years later in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Loss of life could have been much greater had the earthquake struck at a busier time of day. TIME: July 21, 1952 / 4:52 am, PDT LOCATION: 23 miles south of Bakersfield MAGNITUDE: 7.5 The largest earthquake in southern California since the Fort Tejon earthquake of 1857 and the Owens Valley earthquake of 1872, the Kern County earthquake of 1952 caused immense and widespread damage. The quake occurred on the White Wolf fault, a reverse fault (with some left-lateral component of slip) north of the intersection of the Garlock and San Andreas faults. The area shaken by this quake was impressively large. It was felt in Reno, Nevada, and required a construction effort in Las Vegas to realign structural steel. In San Francisco, it was felt mainly by people on the upper floors of tall buildings.

Power outtages occurred in Los Angeles, along with minor building damage. It was felt in San Diego as well, and even damaged one building there! At Owens Lake, about 200 kilometers away, the shaking broke a pipeline and disturbed salt beds, causing damage to a mining operation. The Kern County earthquake claimed 12 lives, was responsible for at least 18 injuries, and caused at least $50 million in property damage. This quake and its aftershocks (at least 20 were of magnitude 5.0 or greater) were responsible for damaging hundreds of buildings in the Kern County area, at least 100 of which had to be torn down. It devestated a section of the Southern Pacific Railroad line near Bear Mountain. It wreaked havoc on agriculture in the Arvin area, where the land has been reclaimed from the Kern River Delta, creating conditions which amplify the shaking of an earthquake. Slumping and surface rupture caused irrigation breaks and subsurface movement disturbed well output. Major relevelling had to be done in many places.

(Click on image for a large aerial panorama of the 1906 earthquake.) THE GREAT SAN FRANSISCO EARTHQUAKE 1906 TIME: April 18, 1906/ 5:12 am PST LOCATION: 2 miles offshore from San Fransisco MAGNITUDE: 7.8 The Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 struck San Francisco and the coast of northern California. It ruptured along the San Andreas Fault both northward and southward for a total length of 296 miles. Shaking was felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, and inland as far as central Nevada. The earthquake and resulting fire would be remembered as one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the United States, comparable in devastation to the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.This death toll has been revised to today's conservative estimate of at least 3000; some estimates have put it as high as 6000. Between 225,000 and 300,000 people were left homeless out of a population of about 400,000.

Over 80% of the city was destroyed by the earthquake and fire. The 1908 Lawson Report, a study of the 1906 quake, showed that the very same San Andreas Fault which had caused the disaster in San Francisco ran close to Los Angeles as well. 5 Major Cities That Are Going to Be Destroyed 5 Major Cities That Are Going to Be Destroyed NFL Reviewing Touchdown Celebration Penalty Rules If you turn on the news and hear that some city is being devastated by its fourth flood in 20 years, or that a village at the foot of some volcano has just been buried under lava, there is a 100 percent chance that someone in the room will ask, Why don't those people just move? It's a good question, and the answer gives us a nice insight into mankind's absolute refusal to back down from nature, even if it means certain destruction. Brave? Stupid? You be the judge. All we know is that a whole lot of us are in the same boat.

Advertisement 5 San Francisco, USA -- Earthquake Back in 2001, before 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced a short list of the three most likely disasters to hit America over the coming years. One was a terrorist attack on New York, another was a hurricane in New Orleans, and the third was an earthquake in San Francisco. Note that this was shortly before two of those things actually goddamn happened. Getty "FEMA: Using our powers for good, and occasionally the lottery." Withholding speculation as to whether FEMA are in fact wizards, that's a pretty "oh shit" moment right there if you live in San Francisco. It also emphasizes the fact that the continued existence of San Francisco is a testament to mankind's ongoing desire to engage in a staring contest against horrible catastrophe. And let's be clear, this isn't some sensationalist scare tactic -- at some point, an earthquake is going to devastate the city. The United States Geological Survey says that the chances of a quake of at least 6.7 on the Richter scale hitting San Fran in the next 30 years sits at a cozy 99 percent .

Yeah, nature, 45 degrees is OK, too, we guess. Whatever you say. Holy Shit! What Can We Do? Of course, San Franciscans are more than ready for this kind of thing, right? When you know that your city is prone to devastating earthquakes, then you're going to make sure that earthquakes factor into your building ordinances. Well, it's true that the state of California did decide to start earthquake-proofing all their new buildings ... in 1980 . So if you're wondering whether your highrise office is going to withstand the inevitable Big One, you'd just better hope that the building doesn't outdate hair metal. Getty "Your threat level is Motley Crue but could rise to above Kiss at any time." The problem is the fact that most of the Bay Area is built upon a foundation of soft mud that, during an earthquake, is prone to something frighteningly referred to as liquefaction , which is exactly what it sounds like.

Estimates say that a quake in the range of a 7.8 on the Richter scale (which is right in the range of what we'd expect -- the 1906 quake was an 8.0 ) would topple 1,500 buildings and badly damage another 300,000. The government has just started rushing against time to brace the Golden Gate Bridge after reports showed a quake would cause it to utterly collapse . Wikipedia Like this, but with a billion-dollar special effects budget. But what's really standing between San Francisco and avoiding total annihilation is money. With a $25.4 billion budget deficit, the California government wants property owners to retrofit their own damn buildings if they're so scared of earthquakes, a cost that no average person can afford, forcing them into a much cheaper but less effective form of earthquake insurance -- prayer. Never mind that the cost of earthquake-proofing San Francisco would only be around $260 million , compared to the estimated cost of rebuilding after a quake -- $200 billion . But, hey, we're not economists. Getty Although we have left plenty of them in San Francisco. Underneath the rubble.

4 Wikipedia Likely the only things you know about Venice is that it has water in the streets, that people get around in gondolas, and that it is all very romantic. There's a good chance you've never asked yourself why it has water in the streets, and, in fact, you might think that they did that on purpose, just for the tourists. The reality is that the city is sinking into the Mediterranean Sea at a horrifying rate. Getty "Crap. I forgot to pack my rush-hour snorkel." It turns out Venice, built practically on top of a body of water, is not exactly the best-planned city. Back in the 12th century when Venice went through a population explosion, the city used up all of its available land and was forced to build upon acres of really shitty mud. Since these were the Dark Ages and everyone was an idiot, the rulers decided to just cover the ground with millions of wooden planks and build on top of that. Unsurprisingly, the whole thing has been very slowly sliding into the ocean ever since.

It didn't help that, in the early 1900s, city officials began pumping water out of the bedrock underneath the city for some reason, which is kind of like playing a game of Jenga by taking all the blocks out from the bottom first. Getty Fuck over the next guy and hope everyone forgets your mistakes. Politics Jenga. Because Venice smartly sits right at sea level, it already floods basically every Tuesday. The Acqua Alta is the name the locals give to the regular flooding that turns the morning work commute into a 3-mile breaststroke. The thing is, back in 1900, the Acqua Alta came 10 times a year, while these days it's closer to 100 , because the city sank 20 centimeters over that time. "If we're quick, we can eat lunch here and blublublublublublub." And now we have global warming. As in, the thing that causes the sea levels to rise thanks to melting ice and thermal expansion of ocean water . Scientists say that the combined threat means that Venetians will need to evolve gills by 2100. Getty As long as they're designer gills.

Holy Shit! What Can We Do? The Venetian government is making plans to offset the rapidly encroaching Atlantisification of their city, though it sounds more like something Mr. Burns would propose than anything practical. The Moses Project is a plan to surround Venice with a series of gigantic, ridiculously expensive moving barriers that are supposed to hold back the ocean if it starts acting like a mean drunk. Getty "You guys killed all the whales, and now there's no one to drink with!" But Italy is under constant pressure to scrap the project with concerns that it simply won't do shit , though nobody has proposed a better solution that doesn't involve retrofitting the entire city with giant inflatable balloons. "... bit inappropriate, don't you think?" ↓ Continue Reading Below Seattle, USA -- Earthquake Getty Yes, an earthquake. In Seattle. The coffee-soaked home of Frasier isn't exactly on the edge of its seat waiting for the ground to start shaking, but maybe it should be -- it's looking down the barrel of what could be one of the worst earthquakes in history . Getty Also it may mess up Portland and Vancouver a bit, but they're not as pretty so they don't count.

The state of Washington was last hit by an earthquake in 2001 , and while no deaths were recorded, nature was just getting started. Some science people say that there is an 80 percent chance within the next 50 years that a massive fault off the shore of the Pacific Northwest is going to break apart and trigger what they are unnervingly calling a "megaquake." Wikipedia "Megaquakes on the Ring of Fire" was a massive hit in the 1980s. The fault, which could be the biggest in the world, has started building up strain , which is the earthquake equivalent of smoke billowing from the top of a volcano, and scientists have been scrambling to find some way to get the residents of Seattle and the surrounding areas to give a damn. Here's a computer simulation of the devastation, put together by the Washington State Department of Transportation: That's simulating a 7.0 quake. The fault line could produce a 9.0 -- as powerful as the one that just devastated Japan. Holy Shit! What Can We Do? If you built a city along the most gaping fault line on planet Earth, that should be the most earthquake-prepared city in existence, right?

The buildings should be made from adamantium. But the truth is, Seattle just doesn't know much about earthquakes. Ask around, and old timers will tell you tales of the dreaded 5.5 Duvall quake which momentarily interrupted a Mariners game . Because it's been so long since the last "big one," modern-day Seattle is so unprepared for earthquakes that it's full of completely unreinforced masonry structures that basically fall over if you sneeze too hard. historylink "We can probably just ... caulk that closed or something." The last time the megaquake happened was in 1700. Native Americans still tell chilling campfire tales about it, and the devastation was well documented in Japan . That's right -- the last time this fault line went off in a big way, it damaged Japan. On the bright side, the Space Needle is predicted to withstand a quake of up to around 9.1, so when the big one hits, you know where to go.

Getty 2 Goma, DRC -- Volcano/Limnic Eruption With a population of about 500,000 people, Goma, a major city in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is about the size of Kansas City. However, there are a few key differences -- unlike Goma, Kansas City does not currently sit right next to an active volcano. Wikipedia In response, Goma is proud to point out that at least they have no giant shuttlecocks littering their city. To be fair, the volcano is 18 kilometers away, but since the lava can only flow in one of two directions, it has a 50-50 chance of striking the city , which reduces the fate of the African population to a coin flip every time the volcano starts huffing smoke. The last time it happened, in 2002, Goma lost the coin toss, and a fifth of the city was drenched in liquid rock. But even if the residents do evolve lava-resistant skin, they still live in the Great Rift Valley, which means there is another disaster lurking that can team up with the volcano to wipe out the city, like a coalition of supervillains. Radio Okapi Dr.

Explosiony and his pal, Suffocatiozoid. Limnic eruptions are freak events in which lakes containing an abundance of carbon dioxide suddenly vomit out a cloud of the stuff so huge that it suffocates everything nearby. The combination of volcanic and seismic activity needed to make this happen is pretty rare, but one lake with just the right ratio of horrible ingredients is Lake Kivu . And what city lies on the shores of Lake Kivu? Why, it's "We live right next to a constantly exploding volcano" Goma, of course. Wendkuni Come for the lava flows and stay because falling ash has asphyxiated you. Kivu is one of only three known "exploding lakes" in the world, and it's an uneasy sign that the other two both exploded recently . Holy Shit! What Can We Do? Efforts are underway to remove the gas from Kivu, but that's not going to do anything about the fucking volcano. So maybe rather than addressing either, it'd be easier just to, you know, move the town down the road a few miles.

1 Dhaka, Bangladesh -- Almost Everything Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, is the ninth largest city in the world, and the single most densely populated. It also has basically been under slow demolition for more than 100 years. Also known as God's batting cage, Dhaka has to deal with annual monsoons (which bring devastating floods), and they see a cyclone (a smaller kind of hurricane) basically every year . If you're frustrated by living in a city that ruins one picnic a year, you really need to visit Dhaka to get some perspective. Jonas Merian As long as that perspective is crushed against someone's armpit. But the hits just keep coming. In 1989, a tornado devastated the city. That's no surprise because Bangladesh is the most tornado-prone place in the world behind North America. And did somebody say earthquakes? They have those, too . Living in Dhaka is basically living in a Roland Emmerich movie every single day. Seriously, we're waiting to hear reports of comet bombardment or flat-out alien invasion. Red Cross You know it's bad when the picture description has the words "minor flooding." Oh wait, did we forget to mention the tsunami threat ?

Really, the most important thing we have to learn from Dhaka is how the hell it still exists. The city has two seasons: cyclones and flooding. Holy Shit! What Can We Do? Despite living in the most flat-out horrifying and disaster-ridden area of the globe, the people of Dhaka just haven't prepared for the quakes. Perhaps it slipped their mind while they were dodging tornadoes. Scientists say that a magnitude 6 quake, which really isn't that big, has the capacity to damn near obliterate the city . Their buildings are so poorly equipped for a quake that 80 to 90 percent of the concrete structures in the city would just collapse. mazdoornama So they, like the rest of mankind to one degree or another, are hoping nature will hold off until we get our shit together. For more doomsday-like disasters we should be ready for, check out 6 Man-Made Natural Disasters Just Waiting to Happen , Or see the ones that have already happened in 6 Natural Disasters That Were Caused by Human Stupidity . And stop by LinkSTORM to see which site eats it first when the Internet apocalypse arrives.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed. Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop ! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow! The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake The Great 1906 San Francisco Earthquake 5:12 AM - April 18, 1906 San Francisco City Hall after the 1906 Earthquake. (from Steinbrugge Collection of the UC Berkeley Earthquake Engineering Research Center ) The California earthquake of April 18, 1906 ranks as one of the most significant earthquakes of all time. Today, its importance comes more from the wealth of scientific knowledge derived from it than from its sheer size.

Rupturing the northernmost 296 miles (477 kilometers) of the San Andreas fault from northwest of San Juan Bautista to the triple junction at Cape Mendocino, the earthquake confounded contemporary geologists with its large, horizontal displacements and great rupture length. Indeed, the significance of the fault and recognition of its large cumulative offset would not be fully appreciated until the advent of plate tectonics more than half a century later. Analysis of the 1906 displacements and strain in the surrounding crust led Reid (1910) to formulate his elastic-rebound theory of the earthquake source, which remains today the principal model of the earthquake cycle. At almost precisely 5:12 a.m., local time, a foreshock occurred with sufficient force to be felt widely throughout the San Francisco Bay area. The great earthquake broke loose some 20 to 25 seconds later, with an epicenter near San Francisco. Violent shocks punctuated the strong shaking which lasted some 45 to 60 seconds. The earthquake was felt from southern Oregon to south of Los Angeles and inland as far as central Nevada.

The highest Modified Mercalli Intensities (MMI's) of VII to IX paralleled the length of the rupture, extending as far as 80 kilometers inland from the fault trace. One important characteristic of the shaking intensity noted in Lawson's (1908) report was the clear correlation of intensity with underlying geologic conditions. Areas situated in sediment-filled valleys sustained stronger shaking than nearby bedrock sites, and the strongest shaking occurred in areas where ground reclaimed from San Francisco Bay failed in the earthquake. Modern seismic-zonation practice accounts for the differences in seismic hazard posed by varying geologic conditions. As a basic reference about the earthquake and the damage it caused, geologic observations of the fault rupture and shaking effects, and other consequences of the earthquake, the Lawson (1908) report remains the authoritative work, as well as arguably the most important study of a single earthquake. In the public's mind, this earthquake is perhaps remembered most for the fire it spawned in San Francisco, giving it the somewhat misleading appellation of the "San Francisco earthquake". Shaking damage, however, was equally severe in many other places along the fault rupture.

The frequently quoted value of 700 deaths caused by the earthquake and fire is now believed to underestimate the total loss of life by a factor of 3 or 4. Most of the fatalities occurred in San Francisco, and 189 were reported elsewhere. Earthquake prediction: Gone and back again | EARTH Magazine Request Library Access Earthquake prediction: Gone and back again A collapsed bridge after the Tangshan, China, earthquake on July 28, 1976, which killed more than 240,000 people. Although Chinese seismologists "successfully" predicted the Haicheng quake of 1975, they failed to forecast this one. Credit: USGS After the Haicheng quake, a Chinese seismologist produced this map of strange animal behavior (circled areas) and earthquake fractures (dotted lines). Credit: Helmut Tributsch and The MIT Press for the English language edition Luminous dots over Parma, Italy, on August 10, 2007. Five days later, there was a small magnitude-2.9 quake. The dots may be ionized air from shifting faults, proponents of earthquake prediction say.

Credit: GAZETTA DI PARMA - Italy The 1990s and early 2000s were hard times for earthquake prediction research. “For 10 years, there was limited funding in the U.S.,” says Dimitar Ouzounov, a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. That changed in 2004, Ouzounov says, after a magnitude-9-plus quake struck off the coast of Sumatra and set off a tsunami, killing more than 225,000 people in 11 countries. It was a seminal moment in earthquake research, Ouzounov says. “It actually showed we were not able to get in advance any information on the biggest event of the last 100 years.” Improving that information, according to Ouzounov, should include research on geophysical anomalies that precede large seismic events — regional, days-long increases in temperature or alterations in the electromagnetic field — that could one day act as warnings of major earthquakes. Many researchers have failed to validate these signals for centuries. Some scientists have deemed them a useless cause.

But after the disaster that befell Sumatra, quake prediction research has regained demand — and funding. Historical Intrigue In Europe, accounts of strange animal behavior before earthquakes go back to ancient Greece. But such signals didn’t win serious scientific attention until 1975, when Chinese officials “successfully” predicted a major earthquake near the city of Haicheng, about 550 kilometers northeast of Beijing. Based on the surrounding province’s 2,200-year earthquake history and an array of geological measurements, China’s National Earthquake Bureau concluded in 1974 that a major earthquake would strike the area within the next two years, wrote physical chemist Helmut Tributsch in “When the Snakes Awake: Animals and Earthquake Prediction.” Determined to avoid the worst, the bureau not only expanded its measurement network, but trained more than 100,000 “honorary observers” to spot signs of an impending quake: Animals might leave their borrows, they were told. Well waters might cloud up and bubble. Lightning might strike from clear skies.

Furthermore, the National Earthquake Bureau maintained, a small earthquake would strike north of the future “big one.” After a minor quake struck just 70 kilometers north of Haicheng in December 1974, reports of unusual phenomena began streaming in: “Geese flew into trees,” Tributsch writes. “Pigs bit at each other or dug beneath the fences of their sties … Gas bubbles appeared in the pond water.” After a swarm of small quakes struck throughout the region in early February 1975, officials began evacuating Haicheng in full swing by 2 p.m. on Feb. 4, placing people in emergency shelters and herding animals from their stables. Then, around 7:36 that night, the quake hit. It was a magnitude 7.3, large enough to destroy or severely damage about 50 percent of the buildings in the region. Although the quake’s destruction killed 2,041 people, as many as 150,000 deaths and injuries might have occurred if not for officials’ well-timed evacuation, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Scientific commissions from around the world converged on the scene to investigate the “successful prediction.” Though the Chinese admitted they had little explanation for the usefulness of animal behavior as earthquake precursors, Tributsch writes that one Chinese seismologist told a colleague from Caltech that animal observation was “the best method for earthquake prediction thus far.” American Interest Following the Haicheng quake, other reports of advances in earthquake prediction appeared, including some from the former Soviet Union, says John Filson, a geologist emeritus at USGS in Reston, Va. By 1976, the U.S. National Research Council was convinced, concluding in a report that with “the appropriate commitment and level of effort,” earthquake prediction “may be possible within 10 years in well-instrumented areas.” Of course, there were other, more scientific criteria than the animal behavior sightings used in the Haicheng quake.

In a 1973 Science paper, scientists at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., argued that parameters such as “tilt, fluid pressure, electrical and magnetic fields, radon emission, the frequency of occurrence of small local quakes, and the ratio of the number of small to large shocks” could, with enough diligence, elicit reliable signals of upcoming quakes. They might even explain all those strange pre-quake phenomena people had reported over the centuries. For example, Tributsch explained in a 1978 paper in Nature that strongly charged air and particulates had been linked to “serotonin irritation syndrome,” in mammals, “fog in air with less than 100 percent humidity” and “light-producing electrical discharges.” By 1977, Filson says, Congress established the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program. Up to half of the new program’s $30 million budget was to be spent on earthquake prediction research. It was a scientific free-for-all. “People were measuring everything from cockroach activity to radon emissions, seismic patterns to strange electrical currents,” recalls Filson, chief of the USGS Office of Earthquake Studies at the time.

And knowing whether to issue a warning from those parameters was no easy task, Filson says. “I’d get these calls when I was at the dinner table saying, ‘John, we’ve seen this big signal from our machine or from our data, you’d better do something.’ And we’d talk about it, and the final comment would be, ‘Well you’d better do something. What are you going to do?’ … It was a terrible position to be in.” More often than not, Filson says, those “signals” proved faulty. “Two or three days would pass [with no earthquake], and then I’d call this person back and I’d say, ‘What happened?’ And he’d say, ‘Our capacitor burnt out’— it was a spurious signal from some electronic failure.” Even the most exacting experiments failed to produce results. In the mid-1980s, scientists predicted a four-year window within which an earthquake should occur on the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, Calif., based on a roughly 22-year recurrence cycle. The quake did not occur.

(One eventually did occur in 2004, although no obvious precursors were observed, Filson says.) Furthermore, claims of enhanced magnetic field levels prior to the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco also faced steep suspicion (and were recently shown to be the result of a sensor system malfunction according to a 2009 paper in the journal Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors). By the mid-1990s, the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council had fallen into inactivity. By 1997, a seismologist wrote in a review of precursor research in Geophysical Journal International that earthquake prediction was “effectively impossible.” Since then, for the most part, scientists have settled for the next best things. Earthquake hazard assessments, for example, use past earthquake history to estimate the probability that a quake of a particular magnitude will occur in an area within a given period. And earthquake early warning systems can, when they work right, give regions up to a minute’s warning of approaching shock waves from a faraway quake — enough time to stop a train or shut down nuclear power plants. “That’s an achievement, of course,” Ouzounov says.

“But,” he adds, “it’s limited.” Back in the Spotlight After the 2004 Sumatra earthquake and tsunami, quake prediction was back in demand. In 2006, for example, the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council was re-established. Ouzounov’s current research at NASA is also part of that trend. Ouzounov is working with NASA colleague Patrick Taylor to study thermal anomalies in regions of major earthquakes from satellite and ground-based data. That coupling of quakes with atmospheric temperatures is based on gas discharges according to Ouzounov and his colleagues: Uranium-bearing rocks in Earth’s crust emit minute amounts of radon, a colorless, odorless gas that forms from the decay of radium. As faults shift in the days leading up to an earthquake, they create new openings from which radon can escape. That excess radon, in turn, releases alpha particles that tinge the atmosphere with ionic charge and allow the formation of aerosol-sized particles as ions mix with water. And it is the latent heat from that chain of physical processes, Ouzounov hypothesizes, that satellites could pick up as thermal anomalies preceding some major earthquakes.

It’s a verifiable concept based on fundamental principles in atmospheric physics, Ouzounov says. Formation of aerosol-sized particles could also explain other precursor phenomena, such as earthquake fog and unusual clouds formation. Ouzounov and his colleagues have even found Earth radiation anomalies one to two months before the Sumatra earthquake, with a maximum signal two weeks before the quake. But, Ouzounov says, such findings by no means authenticate earthquake precursors. “We need to show more statistical validation of the results,” Ouzounov says. “We’d like to show continuous observation, not just a case-by-case study.” And even if precursors were validated statistically, Ouzounov says, such a finding would not match the level of earthquake prediction envisioned by scientists in the past. “The approach of validating the earthquake atmospheric precursors is not very different from the methodology used in weather forecasting,” he says. “Statistically, the weather forecast for Washington, D.C., is about 80 percent reliable during the winter.” Thermal electromagnetic anomalies, on the other hand, have not shown nearly that kind of reliability in correlation with major earthquakes on a global scale.

As a result, Ouzounov says that any “validated” precursors would likely supplement, not replace, current earthquake early warning systems. In the meantime, research on earthquake precursors has improved quite a bit since the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of the single sensor that may have incorrectly detected changes in the magnetic field before the Loma Prieta earthquake, Ouzounov says, geophysicists can now test research and observations against multiple satellites and ground-based monitoring networks measuring numerous parameters. And other scientists — though still skeptical — are showing interest. Last fall, Ouzounov and colleagues invited seismologists and atmospheric scientists to listen to the latest developments in earthquake precursor research at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, Calif. With an international collaboration of experts working on different aspects of this issue, Ouzounov says, scientists can better evaluate earthquake anomalies. In short, he says, “we are on the quest for validation.” A Work in Progress Ouzounov has his work cut out for him.

“If we’ve learned one thing over the last several decades,” says Michael Blanpied, associate coordinator for the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program in Reston, Va., and a member of the National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, it is “that the kinds of observations that may lead to earthquake prediction are going to be very subtle. Proof that there is predictability is going to require … a great deal of work to demonstrate to the scientific community that it’s true.” But the issue of earthquake prediction is more complicated than that, Blanpied says, because even if geoscientists could declare with high certainty that a large quake was 24 hours away, it doesn’t address one big social question: What measures would officials need to take? Twenty-four hours is still a short amount of time to prepare a highly populated area for an earthquake. Without a specific plan to evacuate, Blanpied says, mass panic could ensue. Filson knows this from experience. In 1980, a scientist at the U.S. Bureau of Mines announced that a major quake would strike Lima, Peru, around June 28, 1981.

The National Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council determined that the finding was based on questionable theoretical assumptions, and responded that members of the council were so confident that a quake would not occur during the proposed four-day window around the date, that they would have no fear of being in Lima during the prediction window. Filson went to Peru, where he tried to calm citizens via television and newspaper interviews. Filson’s message proved correct; no earthquake hit. But at a dinner at the U.S. embassy, he discovered his assurances had been in vain. At first, Filson thought the tuna sandwiches served by the ambassador and his wife were an attempt to save taxpayer money. Then the ambassador’s wife revealed that all of the indigenous staff at the embassy, including the cooks, had left Lima for their hometowns — to die with their families. No one died, obviously, but the question remains whether earthquake prediction will ever be correct enough to create solutions and not panic. Brian Fisher Johnson Ecuador earthquake: Rescuers race to find survivors - CNN.com 2 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A relative kisses a photo of Kexly Valentino attached to her coffin in Montecristi on April 19.

Kexly and her mother and brother died in the quake. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Rescuers search for survivors in Manta on April 19. Hide Caption 4 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Maria Victoria, 89, is comforted by her daughter Mariana in Estancia Las Palmas on April 19. The elderly woman was injured when a column fell on her. Hide Caption 5 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A Manta family wakes up April 19 after sleeping outside their home destroyed in the quake. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Firefighters remove a body from a destroyed building in Portoviejo on Monday, April 18. Hide Caption 7 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A truck moves the belongings of a family from Pedernales to Jama over a road destroyed in the quake on April 18. Hide Caption 8 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Pallbearers carry a coffin to a cemetery as relatives mourn the loss of loved ones in Portoviejo on April 18.

Hide Caption 9 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A man, his home destroyed by the earthquake, sleeps in a boat docked along the shore in La Chorrera on April 18. Hide Caption 10 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa kisses a group of children after meeting with local authorities at the emergency center in Portoviejo on Sunday, April 17. Hide Caption 11 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Rescue workers search the rubble of a collapsed building for victims in Guayaquil, Ecuador, on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Volunteers remove a body from a destroyed house in Pedernales, Ecuador, on April 17. Hide Caption 13 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Vehicles from a car dealership hang on a precipice caused by an earthquake induced landslide in Portoviejo, Ecuador, on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador People walk among the debris of a collapsed building in Pedernales, Ecuador, on April 17.

Hide Caption 15 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A woman cries as she stands next to a destroyed house in Pedernales, Ecuador, April 17. Hide Caption 16 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador People make their way through debris from a collapsed building in Pedernales, Ecuador, on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A building has collapsed in Portoviejo on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador People search through the rubble of destroyed homes in Pedernales on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A destroyed vehicle lies under debris in Portoviejo on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A man takes in the damage in Portoviejo on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador A rescue worker searches a destroyed house in Pedernales on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Residents remain on the streets for fear of aftershocks in Pedernales on April 17.

Hide Caption 23 of 29 Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Rescue workers try to pull out survivors trapped in a collapsed building in Manta on April 17. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Police check out a car crushed under a collapsed overpass in Guayaquil. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Rescue workers stand near a destroyed car in Guayaquil. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Residents walk on a street amid destroyed buildings in Guayaquil on April 16. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador An hotel leans after the earthquake in Manta on April 16. Hide Caption Photos: Powerful quake hits Ecuador Damage is seen inside a store in Guayaquil on April 16. Hide Caption Photos: From tile-shaking to tsunamis, how strong can a quake get? Micro Magnitude: Less than 3.0 Average number by year: The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are 1.3 million quakes per year that register a 2.0 to 2.9.

Caltech says there are about 1,000 of those quakes per day and about 8,000 quakes per day that fall in the 1.0 to 1.9 range. Damage: little to none Additional note: A quake measuring 2.5 to 3.0 is generally the smallest earthquake felt by people. Hide Caption Photos: From tile-shaking to tsunamis, how strong can a quake get? Minor Magnitude: 3.0-3.9 Average number per year: The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there are about 130,000 minor earthquakes each year. Caltech estimates there are 49,000. Damage: Little to none Photos: From tile-shaking to tsunamis, how strong can a quake get? Strong Average number per year: 120-134 Damage: Severe Notable quakes: About 5,500 people were killed in January 1995 by a magnitude 6.9 quake in Kobe, Japan.

The Loma Prieta earthquake (magnitude 6.9) killed 63 people in October 1989 and caused an estimated $6 billion in damage in California's San Francisco Bay area. It is remembered for occurring just before a World Series game. Hide Caption Photos: From tile-shaking to tsunamis, how strong can a quake get? Major Average number per year: 17-18 Damage: Widespread, heavy Notable quakes: A magnitude 7.3 quake killed 110,000 people in Asghabat, USSR, in October 1948. About 70,000-100,000 people were killed in December 1908 by a magnitude 7.2 quake in Messina, Italy. In October 2005, a magnitude 7.6 quake killed 86,000 people in Pakistan. The deadliest quake in American history registered 7.8 in 1906 and killed an estimated 3,000 people in San Francisco, California.

On April 25, 2015, an earthquake in Nepal registered 7.8, killing close to 9,000 people and causing $10 billion in damages. Hide Caption Photos: From tile-shaking to tsunamis, how strong can a quake get? Great Hayward Fault eartquake expected 'any day now', claims geophysicist | Daily Mail Online Share 2.2k shares Fremont Police Department tweeted: 'We felt it. Lots of calls coming in from nervous and scared residents, but no reports of damage at this time.' Many residents also took to Twitter after waking up in the middle of the night. Laine Renfro wrote: 'The first thoughts in my head were: earthquake, San Francisco, Wtf I'm gunna die.' A Hazard map released by the US Geological Survey shows the areas most at risk to earthquakes RISK OF MAGNITUDE 8 QUAKE In the study, the estimate for the likelihood that California will experience a magnitude 8 or larger earthquake in the next 30 years has increased from about 4.7% for UCERF2 to about 7.0% for UCERF3. A report from the U.S.

Geological Survey has warned the risk of 'the big one' hitting California has increased dramatically. Researchers analysed the latest data from the state's complex system of active geological faults, as well as new methods for translating these data into earthquake likelihoods. The estimate for the likelihood that California will experience a magnitude 8 or larger earthquake in the next 30 years has increased from about 4.7% to about 7.0%, they say. 'We are fortunate that seismic activity in California has been relatively low over the past century,' said Tom Jordan, Director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and a co-author of the study. 'But we know that tectonic forces are continually tightening the springs of the San Andreas fault system, making big quakes inevitable.' But another Twitter user, JRehling, was less alarmed, writing: 'That was the first earthquake I've felt in San Francisco since the Napa quake in August 2014. Very mild, probably minuscule damage.' And Karan Dhillon quipped: I seriously can't imagine anyone in San Francisco thinking it's a good idead to sleep naked.' The quake comes after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck the region 11 months ago.

It was the largest quake to hit Northern California in a quarter-century and killed one woman and injured hundreds of people. It also caused about $400million in property damage in Napa Valley. The Independent reports that 23.4 per cent of all earthquakes in the US happen in California - and that the state has reported more than 6,600 in the past year alone. The Hayward Fault, which extends from San Pablo Bay in the north to Fremont in the south, passes through heavily populated areas including Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont. Tuesday's quake occurred at 2.41 am PST on the border of Fremont and Union City on the Hayward Fault at a depth of 5 miles. The epicentre was north of the intersection of Niles Canyon Road and Mission Boulevard. The last time there was a big earthquake along the fault was in in 1868, and was estimated to have a 6.8-magnitude, according to the USGS. It caused extensive damage to the Bay area with 30 people losing their lives and was known as the 'Great San Francisco Earthquake' until it was eclipsed by the quake of 1906.

'The population is now 100 times bigger in the East Bay, so we have many more people that will be impacted,' said Tom Brocher. 'The past five major earthquakes on the fault have been about 140 years apart, and now we're 147 years from that 1868 earthquake, so we definitely feel that could happen any time,' Brocher said. Shaken: According to Abc7 News, many residents in the East Bay and even down to San Jose were were woken by the shaking (map showing extent of tremors shown above) THE 1906 EARTHQUAKE The M 7.8 San Francisco earthquake of 19O6 struck the coast at 5.12 am on 18 April 18. Devastating fires lasting several days broke out in the city. As a result about 3,OOO people died and over 8O per cent of San Francisco was destroyed. The earthquake and resulting fire are remembered as one of the worst natural disasters in the history of the US alongside the Galveston Hurricane of 19OO and Hurricane Katrina in 2OO5.

People walk through the rubble following an earthquake in San Francisco on April 18, 1906. On April 17, 1906, San Francisco was cosmopolitan enough to host Enrico Caruso in 'Carmen' and so financially flushed it ranked fourth among American cities in raising money to help victims of a volcano in Italy. A day later, San Francisco was pleading for help itself after a giant earthquake struck along the San Andreas fault Read more:

Question: What American city was struck by a major earthquake?
Answer: San Francisco