San Andreas: California Sleeping Giant

The nickname for the San Andreas is California Sleeping Giant.(Oskin). The San Andreas is caused when two of these moving plates meet in western California; the boundary between them is the San Andreas . The Pacific Plate, on the west, moves northwestward relative the North American Plate, on the east, causing earthquakes along the fault. The San Andreas slices California in two from Cape Mendocino into the Mexican border (“The San Andreas .”)

According to the theory of plate tectonics, the San Andreas represents the transform 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. The Northern Pacific plate is sliding laterally past the North American plate in a northerly direction, and hence the San Andreas is classified as

Greater and stronger earthquakes, greater than magnitude 7, happen more than once per month. Huge earthquakes, magnitude 8 and higher, occur about once a year. Most earthquakes occur along the edge of the oceanic and continental plates (“How Often Do Earthquakes Occur?”). The world’s largest earthquake with an instrumentally documented magnitude occurred on May 22, 1960 near Valdivia, in southern Chile. It was assigned a magnitude of 9.5 by the United States Geological Survey. It is referred to as the “Great Chilean Earthquake” and the “1960 Valdivia Earthquake.” Other earthquakes in recorded history may have been larger;however, this is the largest earthquake that has occurred since accurate estimates of magnitude became possible in the early 1900’s (“The Great Chilean Earthquake”). Earthquakes are very dangerous, and if you live in an earthquake bound area, you always need to be prepared for destruction. The San Andreas is 800 miles long and a myth about it is that one day half of California will break off into the ocean, some believe it, others