Report: Strong quake certain to hit California in the future
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In this Jan. 17, 1994 file photo, the covered body of Los Angeles Police Officer Clarence Wayne Dean, 46, lies near his motorcycle which plunged off the State Highway 14 overpass that collapsed onto Interstate 5, after a magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake. The interchange is now named in his memory. A report Tuesday, March 10, 2015, by the U.S. Geological Survey found that the odds of a magnitude-6.7 quake similar in size to the 1994 Northridge disaster was higher in Northern California than Southern California — 95 percent versus 93 percent.
LOS ANGELES >> A new report says California faces a greater than 99 percent chance of being rocked by a strong earthquake in the next 30 years.
The report Tuesday by the U.S. Geological Survey found that the odds of a magnitude-6.7 quake similar in size to the 1994 Northridge disaster was higher in Northern California than Southern California — 95 percent versus 93 percent.
The seismic risks are similar to a 2008 report by the USGS. Back then, seismologists also determined that California faces an almost certain risk of a strong quake.
Of all the faults that crisscross California, the southern San Andreas Fault remains the most dangerous because it hasn’t ruptured in a long time.
The report is a forecast, but it is not a prediction.
