From most of the articles I've been able to read and the television reports this was a major earthquake on Easter Sunday 2010. The 7.2 rating, I have read, is actually more than twice the 7.0 shake that devastated Haiti in the last few weeks and cost about 250,000 Haitians their lives and the awful damage of the 6.9 earthquake in Chile with a loss of 214 lives. I am glad we weren't any closer; to the epicenter a 7.2 quake could have caused some serious damage and loss of life in a populated area. Most of California building codes and retrofits have made newer buildings, highways and bridges much safer in a major earthquake, and in a shaker of this magnitude surely a lot of damage would have been sustained. To me distance from the quakes is the best safety code.
One of the reasons I have always felt earthquake safe in San Diego is the distance that we are located from the San Andreas Fault. While Faults crisscross the entire country and there is a Fault that runs from the coast up Rose Canyon. The active one, the scientists tell us, is the San Andreas which is about 90 miles away from us, at its closest point to San Diego. Los Angeles is less than half that distance and San Francisco has two major sections of the Fault with-in 10 Miles of either side of the Golden Gate Bridge. So while I don't understand all the complexities of the California earthquake, distance from an active fault seems to makes me feel safer.
If San Diego can stand up to a 7.2 quake located 110 miles away, my thinking tells me we are probably in pretty good shape for most anything that could be reasonably predicted in the way of an earth quake along the San Andreas Fault here on La Jolla and San Diego real estate.
Wow that was a real shaker on Easter Sunday 2010.
