“What we’re after is measuring the ground motion,” Given said. “The closer you are to the source, the sooner you know an earthquake has begun.”
Any time a small fault next to a bigger one breaks, it slightly increases the chance of a larger quake, but that risk rapidly decreases with time.
“That doesn’t mean this section of the San Andreas is the next to go,” Hudnut said. “The San Andreas likes to demonstrate how irregular its behavior can be.”
The work recently paid off. Newly installed seismic stations along the eastern shores of the Salton Sea were among the first to pick up the recent swarm, which broke a fault perpendicular to the San Andreas.
The sensors have been sending back valuable data that scientists are only beginning to analyze.
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