MEXICO CITY.- The San Andreas Fault has been a focus to which scientists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) after the recent earthquakes in Mexico, especially because it is theto main existing fracture 800 miles long and extends to depths of at least 10 miles inside the Earth, according to CNN Expansion.
Why is the San Andreas Fault associated with strong earthquakes?
Being the largest, the San Andreas Fault is monitored every time there is an earthquake in this areabecause seismologists always wonder if it will be the “Big One”a phenomenon that occurs every 150 years, although 300 years have passed without anything new happening, which is why seismologists feel concerned knowing that it can happen at any time.
In addition to this data, there is a precedent that in 1857 an earthquake measuring 7.9 degrees on the Richter scale took place.
Where does the San Andreas fault pass through in Mexico?
Although there are multiple continental faultsthe San Andreas fault is the one that causes the most danger because its extension includes more than a thousand kilometers, from the territory of California, in the United States to Baja California, in Mexico.
The faults are a series of regions where the tectonic plates – which belong to the earth’s crust closest to the surface – meet and suffer fractures, causing the displacement of the stone blocks of the lithosphere -located below us- to be modified. When a fault is created, it is due to the fact that the resistance of the materials that make it up is overcome, as a result of the force exerted by the telluric movements.
In fact, continental faults are very common and always occur at the edge of each tectonic plate. After a fault is generated, the lubrication that previously existed between one layer and another is lost, leaving only a cluster of rough rocks on top of each other, which will cause -from time to time- after accumulating a good degree of energy, to be released through seismic waves that we can perceive from the surface.