What's fact and what's fiction in earthquake film San Andreas?
Hollywood's latest earthquake epic is a thrilling blend of fact and fiction
The San Andreas Fault awakens, unleashing back-to-back jolts that leave a trail of destruction from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Skyscrapers crumble. Fires erupt. The letters of the Hollywood sign topple. Tsunami waves swamp the Golden Gate Bridge.
Hollywood's favourite geological bad guy is back in San Andreas, a fantastical look at one of the world's real seismic threats.
The San Andreas has long been considered one of the most dangerous earthquake faults because of its length. At nearly 1,280km long, it cuts through California like a scar and is responsible for some of the largest shakers in state history.
In the film, directed by Brad Peyton, a previously unknown fault near the Hoover Dam in Nevada ruptures and jiggles the San Andreas. Southern California is rocked by a powerful magnitude-9.1 quake followed by an even stronger magnitude-9.6 event in Northern California.
US Geological Survey (USGS) seismologist Susan Hough, who attended an advance screening of the film, says the San Andreas will indeed break again, and without warning. "We are at some point going to face a big earthquake," she says.
The San Andreas is notorious for producing big ones, but a magnitude-9 or larger is virtually impossible because the fault is not long or deep enough, Hough says.