All Those Earthquakes

Last week California was hit by a rather substantial earthquake centered in Chino Hills, an eastern suburb of LA. Chino Hills is about 20 miles from my potential home in Riverside.

My only earthquake experiences have been lived vicariously through episodes of The OC and disaster movies like The Core. I thought that the San Andreas fault was the only fault I needed to worry about. Since Riverside wasn't located on that fault, I'd live earthquake free during my stay in California.

I was wrong in many, many ways. First of all, as evidenced by this map, the fault runs directly through San Bernardino, a city only 10 miles from Riverside.

Second, there are dozens of faults in California, several of which convene in San Bernardino. On this map, you can see the San Andreas fault (red) and then a purple, yellow, brown, lighter purple, and pink fault all bumping into each other near my future house.

In addition to all this, the states of California and Nevada have been hit by 428 earthquakes in the last week. Most of these quakes were in southern California, and at least 7 of those were in between San Bernardino and Riverside. I can barely believe this information, but it's from a government website my school said we should check.

What makes me feel better is looking at the city of Corona on the map. It looks reasonably safe. Assuming all goes according to plan, I will live just a few miles northeast of Corona, in a blissfully fault-free zone.