Oceanside, California consists of many active, geological
events. The most predominate geologic event is earthquakes. California itself
receives over 500 active earthquakes a year.
California
consists of two tectonic plates, known as the North American plate and the
Pacific plate. The two plates together form the Andreas fault, a transformation
fault, which is a very large strike, slip fault. This fault goes all the way up
California but the last time the San Andres released energy was many years ago.
Although, Southern California itself includes over 300 smaller faults that
brings earthquakes that are more often occurring but also not as large seismic
waves that the San Andres might bring. Every earthquake creates three kinds of waves. P,
primary waves and S, Secondary travel downward into the earth, and L, the last
waves that travel along the top of the crust.
http://geomaps.wr.usgs.gov/3D4Dmapping/index.htm
Because
of the high volume of earthquakes, plate boundaries moving and pressure being
released that causes the earth to shake, Southern California is more likely to
receive damage to buildings, ruins to concrete grounds, fires, mass wasting and
even tsunamis. This can be very detrimental and concerning to people that live
in California. Tragedy can strike at anytime. In the last ten days California
has received over 14 earthquakes, all of them with a smaller magnitude doing
barely anything to the people, most probably not even large enough for people to
really notice. What the people need to be concerned with are the larger
magnitude earthquakes, which are thankfully not as occurring as the smaller
earthquakes out of the San Diego area. People are educated on how to react
during a small earthquake and many homes in Southern California come with
insures for any earthquake damage. Homes and buildings today are even designed differently in hope that an earthquake would not do as much damaged. Living in California people need to be
educated on the risk and hope for the best. The aftermath of the earthquakes is
what usually does most harm, the failing of buildings, fires formed and the
mast wasting.
(Damage from a Los Angeles earth quake)
http://pinoytutorial.com/lifebytes/earthquake-awakens-los-angeles-today/
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqscanv/Quakes/quakes_big.html
