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Quake Along Entire San Andreas Fault Could Cause $290 Billion In Residential Damage

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Homes are seen in suburban neighborhoods on top of the San Andreas Rift Zone, the system of depressions in the ground between the parallel faults of the San Andreas earthquake fault, in 2008 in the community of Highland, east of San Bernardino, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)
Homes are seen in suburban neighborhoods on top of the San Andreas Rift Zone, the system of depressions in the ground between the parallel faults of the San Andreas earthquake fault, in 2008 in the community of Highland, east of San Bernardino, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)

Until recently, the expectation for California's longest known fault, the San Andreas, was that one part of it would go, in either Northern or Southern California.

But in 2014, the government published a study indicating that it's possible — though not likely — that the entire 800-mile fault could go all at once.

Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson talks with Maiclaire Bolton, a seismologist and senior product manager at the real estate analytics firm CoreLogic, about what kind of destruction such a quake could cause, and what it could cost to rebuild.

This segment aired on December 15, 2016.

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