The San Andreas Fault, which runs 800 miles through California could zip open for the "Big One," according to article published in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Experts say should a powerful earthquake strike, it would cause extensive damage to millions of homes. But the risk depends on where and when a house was built.
According to the journal, a recent analysis done by a real-estate analytics firm CoreLogic Inc. stated that nearly 3.5 million homes could be damaged if an 8.3 magnitude earthquake hit along a 500-mile stretch of the San Andreas Fault. If it strikes the northern part, 1.6 million homes would crumble—2.3 million if the southern piece is hit.
Pat Abbott, a geology professor at San Diego State University told NBC 7 that the San Andreas fault is one of the most known because of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
“So you go back to 1906 San Francisco earthquake—the fault ruptured the surface of the ground for about 250 miles. Kind of mind-boggling—250 mile tear at the surface of the earth," he said.
Abbott said getting prepared for a potential natural disaster is low on the priority list for many people in our state.
Human history really tells us a lot about what the real definition of 'apocalyptic' is," he said.
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He added that the San Francisco earthquake wrecked most of the city. Buildings were more damaged from fires that resulted from the quake, rather than the quake itself.
But he noted that an earthquake doesn't cause the kind of damage many people seem to think it does.
"There [are] no mountains heaved up over night. The earth doesn’t pull apart and the city fall in, or we don’t have magnitude-10 earthquakes," he said.
According to researchers, a magnitude-8 earthquake would usually strike in California every 2,500 years. But the timing cannot be predicted.
Due to modern construction and new building codes, only about 100,000 people have earthquake insurance in San Diego.
"Earthquakes don’t kill, buildings do," Abbott said, comparing the 1989 San Francisco earthquake to the one that struck Haiti in 2010.
Both earthquakes were the same magnitude but 70 people were killed in San Francisco, while the more recent quake killed about one million people in Haiti.
Abbott says the importance of structural differences in buildings can save lives.
