Overdue Mega-Quake Is Set to Hit Los Angeles Soon

A mega-quake in America’s second most populous city is long overdue, and 50-year-old buildings could come crashing down, killing thousands

Next year residents of Los Angeles will flock to cinemas to see a blockbuster called San Andreas in which their city will be wiped out by an apocalyptic earthquake.

Kylie Minogue and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, one of Hollywood’s current most bankable stars, will be seen roaming the wreckage after the City of Angels is mercilessly flattened by the “Big One”.

As skyscrapers collapse, thousands die and chaos ensues, most of those in the audience will be wondering how long before it happens for real.

The southern section of the San Andreas fault that runs near the city has not had a “mega-quake” of more than magnitude-7.5 since 1680 and it is, according to seismologists, more than a century overdue.

A flurry of lesser earthquakes in recent months has refocused attention on whether America’s second city can withstand a major hit.

In the first five months of this year there were five quakes of more than magnitude 4.0, the first time that has happened since 1994, sending jitters through the city.

“A big earthquake is inevitable,” Los Angeles’ recently appointed “quake tsar” Dr Lucy Jones, told The Telegraph. “Each earthquake that happens increases the probability. We know a lot about earthquakes, we know it will happen. We know everything but the time.”

It is not unlikely that Dr Jones, 59, a US Geological Survey seismologist, may herself feature as a character in San Andreas, the movie.

Universally known as the “Earthquake Lady” she rose to fame 20 years ago following the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake , which killed 57 people and caused $20 billion in damage.

In the 1990s she once appeared before TV cameras holding her one-year-old son and successfully calmed a panicking city. Her informative tweets are now avidly followed by fretting Angelinos.

After persuading her to take on the lead role in preparing for the “Big One” the city’s Mayor Eric Garcetti said: “If I had to create an expert out of clay, I couldn’t have done better.”

But Dr Jones is worried. And when she worries, everyone else should. What is particularly keeping her up at night is the number of old concrete buildings that have not been retrofitted and could topple, or collapse inwardly into a pancake. The expensive retrofitting process involves reinforcing buildings, for example with steel braces.

“LA was built in the 50s and 60s and all of the buildings from that time have some real problems,” she said. Dr Jones herself would never live in one. UCN