Advocate to stop 'Los Angeles day of death'

Over the past few weeks, a fault discovered in the 1990s has strained residents in southern California, where millions of people live on precarious surfaces.

Photo: Reuters

The break on the Puente Hills crust stretches about 40km, hidden beneath the suburbs of Los Angeles, skyscrapers where the center, bridge and highway, are waiting to explode to cause horrific loss for both This region.

Last week, a 5.1-magnitude earthquake destroyed water sources, cracking buildings and causing landslides. The Los Angeles Times quoted experts as saying that if the earthquake reaches 7.5 Richter scale, disaster will be hard to imagine, can kill up to 18,000 people and cause 750,000 people to lose their homes. This is because most of the infrastructure in the area is not built to prevent earthquakes. Bridges don't follow seismic safety regulations and hundreds of buildings made of fragile concrete once the earth's crust vibrates.

Reinforcing city structures takes time as well as money. Only the reconstruction project of the Los Angeles Police Department lost $ 250 million and three years of construction while reinforcing 11 arterial bridges needed $ 400 million. The seismologist Lucy Jones of the US Geological Survey said that at this time Southern California is more likely to catch a strong earthquake of 7.8 or higher. Mrs. Jones's message is that the residents here should always be in the best prepared position and authorities should quickly promote investment in infrastructure to avoid 'Los Angeles' day of death'. .