The 6.7-magnitude earthquake that shook Los Angeles on January 17, 1994. Called the Northridge Earthquake, now stands as the second costliest disaster in U.S. history, after Hurricane Katrina, according to AccuWeather. Northridge cost $42 billion in total damages, while Katrina cost $81 billion, AccuWeather.com said, citing federal figures.
Since then, many more faults have been discovered, including one under downtown Los Angeles. "If an earthquake would occur under there, it would be as large as magnitude 7 or perhaps as large as 7.5 and would be extremely destructive," said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center.
There has been a big leap in technology since the Northridge quake.
"You have significantly more computing power in the smartphone in your pocket now than we had in all of the computers in the seismolab in 1994," said seismologist Lucile Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey and a visiting research associate at the Seismological Laboratory at Caltech.
Find out what's happening in Sherman Oakswith free, real-time updates from Patch.
As a lifelong local, I pride myself in only dealing with local properties. Check out my listings and other information on my main website
You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Zillow, Google+and LinkedIn
