Nature and earthquake in particular are hard to predict.
Is California next in line for big quake?
In just the past year, three major earthquakes have rocked the Pacific Plate.
There was last week’s 9.0 temblor off the coast of Japan; the February quake that toppled Christchurch, New Zealand; and the magnitude 8.8 that shook Chile last year.
If you were to look at the Pacific Plate as if it were a square, you’d notice that those three quakes mark three of its corners.
Which leaves one corner untouched.
And some are now wondering if that fourth corner – running from British Columbia to Southern California – is about to go.
"It is as though the earth becomes like a great brass bell, which when struck by an enormous hammer blow on one side sets to vibrating and ringing from all over,” wrote Simon Winchester, the author of "Krakatoa" and "A Crack in the Edge of the World," in the March 13 edition of Newsweek.
“Now there have been catastrophic events at three corners of the Pacific Plate – one in the northwest, on Friday; one in the southwest, last month; one in the southeast, last year. That leaves just one corner unaffected – the northeast. And the fault line in the northeast of the Pacific Plate is the San Andreas Fault, underpinning the city of San Francisco."
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