Early Monday morning, those living in and around southern Turkey were awoken by a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake that pancaked buildings, and resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. The shaking was so extreme that it was felt as far away as Beirut.
After hours of relentless aftershocks, another massive 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the area, adding to the destruction.
Earthquakes this size are unusual, but not unheard of in the region. This most recent temblor is the largest that’s hit Turkey in decades. And it’s a good reminder that, even though we haven’t seen a Big One in Southern California since the 1800s, we need to be prepared.
“We can’t predict when it’ll happen, but we do know that eventually an earthquake of this size will hit Southern California,” said Morgan Page, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena.
Southern California Is Due For A Big One
There’s a 15% chance that Southern California will get hit by a 7.8 magnitude or larger quake sometime in the next three decades. That’s 44 times more powerful than what we felt during the 1994 Northridge earthquake.
“If we had an earthquake on the San Andreas, which is a similar kind of fault to the East Anatolia fault in Turkey, we would have similar levels of shaking,” said Page.
The Big One: Your Survival Guide
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At LAist, we’ve thought a lot about how to motivate people to prep for the massive earthquake that’s inevitable here in Southern California. We even dedicated an entire podcast to it.
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