1906

The San Andreas Fault is the sliding boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. It slices California in two from Cape Mendocino to the Mexican border. San Diego, Los Angeles and Big Sur are on the Pacific Plate. San Francisco, Sacramento and the Sierra Nevada are on the North American Plate.

According to the theory of plate tectonics, the San Andreas Fault represents the transform (strike-slip) boundary between two major plates of the Earth’s crust: the Northern Pacific to the south and west and the North American to the north and east.

Orogeny. Gorda-California-Nevada. 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 earthquake waves travel across the whole state of California, leveling older buildings, disrupting roads and severing electric, telephone and water lines. Hundreds of fires start. Emergency personnel are hampered with the roads out. Water, electricity and gas lines cross the San Andreas fault in Los Angeles.

every 250 years

That’s less likely than a Californian earthquake, because typically, tsunami waves aren’t super serious once they reach San Francisco’s shores. According to the city, most of the tsunamis that hit the Bay Area from Alaskan earthquakes are less than 1 foot high by the time they make landfall.

A tsunami can kill or injure people and damage or destroy buildings and infrastructure as waves come in and go out. Travel 20-30 miles per hour with waves 10-100 feet high. Cause flooding and disrupt transportation, power, communications, and the water supply. Happen anywhere along U.S. coasts.

Earthquakes, the usual cause of tsunamis, cannot be predicted in time, Neither historical records nor current scientific theory can accurately tell us when earthquakes will occur. Therefore, tsunami prediction can only be done after an earthquake has occurred.