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The Calaveras Fault runs through the hills east of San Jose and „is a mostly right-lateral, strike-slip fault,“ according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The San Andreas and Hayward faults get all the attention in the San Francisco Bay Area, but on Tuesday, the obscure Calaveras Fault made itself known.
A magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck on the fault that runs through the hills east of San Jose, rocking the region and reminding everyone that we live in earthquake country. “The location of the epicenter suggests that this earthquake occurred within the Calaveras Fault zone,” U.S. Geological Survey research geophysicist Annemarie Baltay said in a video posted on Twitter.
Turns out, the Calaveras Fault has the same capability to cause a ruckus as the two big-name faults.
“When we think about hazardous faults in the Bay Area, there are three primary faults, San Andreas, Hayward-Rodgers Creek and Calaveras,” said Richard Allen, director of UC Berkeley’s Seismology Lab. “Calaveras is one of the big three.”
A 2014 report from the USGS found those three faults are the most likely in the Bay Area to see a major earthquake in the future similar to the 1989 Loma Prieta tremor, which killed 63 people.
