Los Angeles Times also reported that Sacramento is the best city to avoid quakes in all of California’s territory. This city has a great advantage because no active fault lines can be found nearby.

The most significant faults within the plate boundary in central and northern California include the San Andreas, San Gregorio-Hosgri, and Hayward-Rodgers Creek fault zones.

The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly 1,200 kilometers (750 mi) through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizontal).

The San Andreas Fault and 6 other significant fault zones are present in the Bay Area: the Calaveras, Concord-Green Valley, Greenville, Hayward, Rodgers Creek, and San Gregorio Faults.

The San Andreas fault line
The San Andreas fault line formed about 30 million years ago as the North American plate engulfed nearly all of the Farallon plate. Since then, the North American plate has ground against the Pacific plate at a boundary called a strike-slip fault.

The San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault might be California’s most known fault line, but maybe not its most destructive. Recently, many faults have been discovered in the Sierra and Southern Cascades, an area active with smaller earthquakes and swarms over the last 150 years.

The San Andreas fault system is to the west, the Garlock fault is to the south and the faults of the Sierra Nevada are to the east. The San Andreas fault system is the major geologic boundary between the North American and Pacific tectonic plates and passes through much of the state.

No, California is not going to fall into the ocean. California is firmly planted on the top of the earth’s crust in a location where it spans two tectonic plates. The strike-slip earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault are a result of this plate motion.

Sacramento
Los Angeles Times also reported that Sacramento is the best city to avoid quakes in all of California’s territory. This city has a great advantage because no active fault lines can be found nearby.

The San Andreas fault
The San Andreas fault is the primary feature of the system and the longest fault in California, slicing through Los Angeles County along the north side of the San Gabriel Mountains.

The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between the Pacific Plate (that includes the Pacific Ocean) and North American Plate (that includes North America).

The San Andreas fault is not long and deep enough to have a magnitude 9 or larger earthquake as depicted in the movie. The largest historical earthquake on the northern San Andreas was the 1906 magnitude 7.9 earthquake.

There are over a hundred smaller active faults in the region that can cause damaging earthquakes like the Northridge earthquake in 1994, such as the Raymond fault, the Santa Monica fault, the Hollywood fault, the Newport-Inglewood fault, and the San Jacinto and Elisnore faults.

The earth’s crust is composed of huge plates that are in slow but nearly constant motion. Part of California is on the Pacific Plate, and part is on the North American Plate. The San Andreas Fault, which runs from the Salton Sea in Imperial County to Cape Mendocino in Humboldt County, is the boundary between these plates.

The California Geological Survey studies earthquakes to help Californians plan and build earthquake resistant communities. We record the strong ground motion from earthquakes, study the distribution of historic earthquakes and evaluate faults that are the source of earthquakes.

They are recognized and mapped by sheared and displaced rock units and by the distinctive landforms created by repeated rupture of the earth’s surface. Descriptions of significant active faults are included in the USGS Quaternary fault and fold database.