California Tsunami imminent?

Question

I heard that scientist are saying that a massive earthquake (possible tsunami) is imminent on the coast of Southern California. As we all know, Cali has earthquakes all the time. I have a friend who just moved there. (What the...?) What do you all think? Would you move to Cali knowing this. Do you think the tsunami is near?!?! I do.

Answer 1

thats not supposed to happen for thousands of years..and even if it didnt happen in a thousand years it happened more recently then they would have time to evacuate using the censors governments have put in the ocean that sense earthquakes!

Answer 2

Well the fault lines run right up the California coast. I'm not sure the distance needed to create a tsunami, but if it needs to be further out than the fault is too close to the coast. Natural disasters are imminent everywhere. I live in the Tampa Bay area and a major hurricane is imminent. An asteroid is immanent. I would not worry because death is imminent no matter what, and these natural occurrences happen 100's of years apart, so you are likely to die from some other reason.

Answer 3

Well, you have to be careful using words like "imminent" b/c what exactly defines "imminent" can be different things in different situations.  To my knowledge, there's no way to predict when an earthquake will occur with enough certainty to say that a quake is imminent in the way that you and i would use the word imminent in every day terms - that is, that an earthquake is going to happen today or tomorrow or something.  What they can do, however, is calculate how often earthquakes of various sizes should occur.  And if i'm remembering correctly, the time between the last big quake occurred and now is longer than they think the time interval between big earthquakes should be.  So from that point of view, Southern California is "overdue" for an earthquake, and that is pretty easily changed into "imminent" in people's minds.  But it doesn't necessarily mean that an earthquake is about to happen...its just that, according to the best guesses at the probabilities, one could happen any time now.  There's reason to believe that a big quake might not happen for a while too....if there are lots of little quakes in Southern California that might be preventing the stress in the crust from building up to where it causes a big quake.

The last thing i'd like to say is that it's not immediately clear to me how a quake in Southern California would cause a tsunami.  This is not my area of expertise so i could be wrong, but when i think of Southern California i think of transform faults like San Andreas where there are two plates sliding past each other.  Quakes originating there would create waves originating in Cali and moving away (in my mind), but for Southern Cali to be hit by a tsunami there needs to be a wave traveling towards it.  I think if you're worried about tsunamis hitting SoCal you might look at places further north where the transform plate boundaries become subduction zones, they seem like better candidates for causing tsunamis that would affect SoCal.

Answer 4

While there are many reasons not to move to California this one would not be so high on my list although I would not want any beachfront property.

It is due for a big shake-up but not just yet I think.

We can only watch and wait.