![]() "Desert Hot Springs is where this is really concerning. ![]() But the fault strand that sparked the city’s growth around the spa industry in the 1950s could also damage the city in the event of a major earthquake. The fault strand is intertwined with the fabric of Desert Hot Springs - the city’s mineral waters, which launched the area's mid-century spa industry that predated the city's incorporation, are attributed to the fault strand. The Mission Creek fault strand cuts in a diagonal line directly through Desert Hot Springs, passing near Two Bunch Palms Resort and Spa, crossing Palm Drive near Buena Vista Avenue, and running just north of Desert Hot Springs High School before continuing to travel northwest through Mission Lakes and past Highway 62 into the San Bernardino Mountains. This scenario assumes that the earthquake would travel along the Banning strand parallel to the 10 freeway and enter the Los Angeles basin, where pockets of strong shaking would occur in the San Gabriel Valley and East Los Angeles.īut an earthquake along the Mission Creek strand would redirect the damages of a major earthquake, meaning possibly good news for the Los Angeles region but bad news for Desert Hot Springs. The southern San Andreas fault is considered the most likely area to produce a major earthquake, and the Great ShakeOut drill is based on a hypothetical rupture along the Banning fault strand, resulting in a magnitude 7.8 earthquake causing an estimated 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries, and $200 billion in damages. So it probably does produce earthquakes more frequently than the Banning strand," said McGill. But this study on the Mission Creek strand found that that strand has a higher slip rate, which means averaged over thousands or tens of thousands of years, it's moving faster than the Banning strand. "The Banning strand is an active strand, and it does produce earthquakes, probably big earthquakes. The Mission Creek strand is estimated to produce earthquakes roughly every 215 years. It's still possible for an earthquake to occur along the Banning strand as well, said Sally McGill, a geology professor at Cal State San Bernardino who was not involved with Blisniuk's study. McGill added that a recent paper by one of her graduate students, Brian Castillo, found that for the past 3,000 years, the Banning strand has produced earthquakes roughly every 380 to 640 years, and the most recent earthquake was between 730 and 950 years ago. ![]() ![]() "Our study suggests that even though an earthquake may still occur on the Banning strand, the Mission Creek fault strand is slipping much faster than the Banning strand, and should be the more likely one to rupture." Generally, when we talk about earthquake hazards and probabilities, unless there's been a very recent earthquake on the fault, the faster a fault slips over geologic time, the higher probability that an earthquake will rupture," said Kim Blisniuk, geology professor at San Jose State University and lead author of the study. "The previous model suggested that from Biskra Palms, the Banning fault strand is the more active strand, which means it is moving faster over geologic timescale. But the Banning strand has a slip rate of just 2.5 millimeters per year. It's long been thought that the Banning strand or the nearby Garnet Hill strand carried the most strain, or stress, from the southern San Andreas fault. The Mission Creek strand runs northwest through Desert Hot Springs, crosses Highway 62 and heads into the San Bernardino Mountains, while the Banning strand roughly follows the path of the 10 freeway, give or take a few miles. The slip rate measures how fast two sides of a fault are moving relative to each other.Īt Biskra Palms near Indio Hills, the San Andreas fault splits into two strands. The study, published in Science Advances, found that the Mission Creek strand is slipping at a rate of 21.6 millimeters a year, faster than the previously estimated rate of around 14 millimeters a year. But in Desert Hot Springs, the drill is a little closer to home, as the Mission Creek strand of the San Andreas fault runs directly through the center of the city.Ī study from earlier this year found that the Mission Creek strand, which stretches from near Indio Hills through the middle of Desert Hot Springs and up into the San Bernardino Mountains, is slipping at a much faster rate than scientists previously thought, making a large earthquake from that strand more likely. Schools, businesses, and government offices across the state participate in the earthquake drill, which started in 2008. 21 at 10:21 a.m., students at Desert Hot Springs schools dropped for cover during the Great California ShakeOut drill, which prepares young Californians on what to do during an earthquake in what has become an annual rite of passage for students growing up in California.
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