“Our findings suggest that the potential for something more complex than a single-fault rupture is real and growing,” said lead author Lillian Burkhard, research affiliate at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa and scientist at the University of Bern, in an email to TIME.
Read more: Scientists Believe This Major Earthquake Fault Line Is Waking Up
“Cajon Pass is a structurally complex junction,” says Burkhard, “where multiple geological factors combine to create gate-like behavior.”
“By precisely dating these anomalies which acts as a natural calendar going back centuries,” Burkhard says, “scientists can identify years in which a major seismic event likely occurred in the region.”
It’s here that the Cajon Pass gets involved. If stress levels of the two faults are similar—both exhibiting the same degree of stress at the same time—they may trigger joint quakes that will break through the boundary of the pass. For a dual quake to happen, however, seismic activity has to occur deep underground, since the faults don’t cross at the surface of the Cajon Pass, but rather far below. “A rupture crossing from one region to the other requires favorable conditions at depth,” says Burkhard. Higher up and the Cajon gate will slam shut, preventing a dual-fault event.
But there are caveats. First of all, the new research was a computer model, not a direct measurement of the current state of the two faults, which would yield more reliable data. Second, as with all earthquake research, trying to time just when a quake will happen is notoriously hard—“one of the most difficult unsolved problems in science,” Burkhard calls it.
The new findings are thus less a reason to panic than to prepare—to have emergency kits and go-bags at the ready, to establish family communication plans, to know in advance evacuation routes from the home and the workplace. “The risk,” says Burkhard, “is real.”
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