Why San Diego Faces A Very Real Tsunami Threat

San Diego's coastline has a greater potential for tsunamis than experts previously believed, reports KGTV.

A recent report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America shows that strike-slip faults along the California coast pose a serious threat of tsunamis in the area.

They previously thought that only subduction zone faults were capable of creating tsunamis.

Strike-slip faults, like the ones found in the San Andreas and Rose Canyon fault in San Diego, cause tectonic plates to crash into each other or move alongside one another.

The earthquakes these cause weren't believed to prompt tsunamis but the new report cites events like the 2018 earthquake and tsunami in Palu as proof that it can happen.

"For the people of San Diego, it shows us that we have the potential of having tsunami, located close to shore, rather than things that just come from 1000s of miles away," San Diego State University geology professor Dr. Pat Abbott told KGTV.

However, San Diego has rarely seen tsunamis with only 11 occurring in the past 100 years and most of them were caused by earthquakes from Japan, Chile, or Alaska.

There have been four tsunamis in Southern California created by local earthquakes, according to KGTV.

"If you feel a big earthquake, you don't want to be standing at the waterline," suggests Dr. Abbott. "Let's get some elevation. Let's go up a floor in a building or climb up a hill or something."

You can find more information about earthquake and tsunami readiness here.

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