There were hundreds of small quakes recorded, prior to the new year, in an area known as "the Brawley Seismic Zone," which connects the San Andreas and Imperial faults, both considered by seismologists of being capable of triggering ruinous temblors.
One such earthquake struck the northern end of the San Andreas fault in 1906, causing the deaths of about 3000 people and triggering a fire that leveled 80 percent of San Francisco. Considering historical precedent and the nature of the region's seismology, a large earthquake is, at the least, likely.
"There's always reason to be concerned for a bigger earthquake," Egill Hauksson, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena who has been monitoring events, told the Times.
Most experts agree that another catastrophic event of a similar scale is inevitable and can hit the area at any time. When it strikes, it could lay waste to some 3.5 million homes, as estimated by real-estate analytics firm CoreLogic.
"We think Southern California is locked and loaded, that the stresses have really built up, and when things start unleashing, they could unleash for years," Ned Field, a seismologist with the US Geological Survey, told Smithsonian magazine in 2015.
