Video: Earthquake Will Be Devastating To LA In Two-and-a-half Years, Say Scientists

By R. Siva Kumar - 23 Oct '15 09:02AM

Will an earthquake isolate California from the rest of the United States, or it is just a sci-fi story? NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab believes that it would happen.

Hence, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), based in Pasadena, said that about 99.9-percent chance of a 5.0 magnitude earthquake shaking Los Angelus in the coming two-and-a-half years may happen, according to Tech Times.

In a study involving eight scientists, with Dr. Andrea Donnellan leading the team, JPL employed radar and GPS devices to assess and conclude how big and devastating the earthquake would be.

"We didn't do a prediction. We were looking at the elastic energy stored in the crust," said Donnellan. "It's like silly putty. If you pull it, it stretches, and then it breaks. The Earth behaves the same way."

The quake might be about 60 miles from the 2014 quake, yet it is not really known which faultline would be struck.

"When the La Habra earthquake happened, it was relieving some of that stress, and it actually shook some of the upper sediments in the LA basin and moved those a little bit more," Donellan said, according to CBS Los Angeles.

Yet, the seismologists at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have drawn up their versions of the study. They seem to have an 85-percent chance of an earthquake between a magnitude 5.0 or 6.0 within three years.

"The area - a 100 km radius circle centered on the city of La Habra - is a known seismically active area. For this same area, the community developed and accepted model of earthquake occurrence, 'UCERF3,' which is the basis of the USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps, gives a three-year probability of 85 percent," the USGS said. "In other words, the accepted random chance of an M5 or greater in this area in three years is 85 percent, independent of the analysis in this paper."