Scientists have been predicting a massive earthquake in California for years now - the question is not if, but when.
“If the much-feared ”Big One” struck California, the massive earthquake would leave 1,800 dead, 50,000 wounded and 200 billion dollars in damage, a team of scientists said.”
Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast http://www.scec.org/ucerf/ has more details on this.
However earthquake prediction methods are not very accurate and hence sometimes they generate false positives too. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_prediction)
Take a look at this: http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/Los_Angeles.html
This clearly shows that earthquakes of small magnitude keep happening almost all the time. We can either be paranoid about it or be prepared and keep our cool. Wikipedia has information on safety measures for earthquake prone geographies - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_seismic_safety.
Comment by Pavan — May 26, 2008 @ 4:19 pm