We watched ‘San Andreas’ last night : a 2015 disaster movie with Dwayne Johnson ‘The Rock’ and earthquakes and a tsunami in California. So of course, I felt I wanted to separate fact from fiction by looking up a few things. Magnitude 9 earthquakes in California? Not real. The complete collapse of Hoover Dam? Not real. One or two tall buildings toppling over in downtown San Francisco? Yes, that’s possible, but not all of them. The movie mentions the biggest earthquake recorded in history – (with a little help from Wikipedia) : The 1960 Valdivia earthquake (Spanish: Terremoto de Valdivia) or Great Chilean earthquake (Gran terremoto de Chile) of Sunday, 22 May 1960, was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded, rating a 9.5 on the moment magnitude scale. It occurred in the afternoon (15:11 local time), and lasted approximately 10 minutes. The resulting tsunami affected southern Chile, Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, eastern New Zealand, southeast Australia, and the Aleutian Islands.
