The past week and a half we have been discussing platectonics and the movement of the plates within our earth. Growing up in the Bay Area, we were constantly reminded about the possibilities of having "the big one" and what that can do to the state and it's economy and how many people can possibly be injured in such a catastrophic event. Living in Fremont, we had two major faults run straight through our city. The Hayward fault, runs through the south part of the city and actually runs right underneath the police station. While, the San Andreas fault runs through the western part of the city. Fremont can be a major spot for an earthquake because of this. Living in Sacramento, we are virtually in an earthquake safe zone because of the hills between the valley and the faults. However, this doesn't mean that we may not feel some of the tremor if the earthquake was large enough.
Overall, the state of California is highly vulnerable to an earthquake, because the mass part of it's population and sources of economy live along the entire coast from San Diego to San Francisco. This means that we need to take major precautions in how we design our buildings, homes, bridges and overall infestrucure in California. This is a main reason why the Bay Bridge has continually been worked on since early September, in order to maintain the highest safety standards, but we truly won't know how well any of our infestructure can withstand one, until that "big one" really occurs.
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