Portal:San Francisco Bay Area/Selected article/10

The Hayward Fault Zone is a geologic fault zone capable of generating significantly destructive earthquakes, throughout the foothills on the eastern shore of the San Francisco Bay. It is parallel to its more famous (and much longer) neighbor, the San Andreas Fault, which lies offshore and through the San Francisco peninsula. Further east still lies the Calaveras Fault and beyond that the Clayton-Marsh Creek-Greenville Fault and their northern and southern extensions via other faults, while the San Gregorio Fault extends along the shoreline and offshore to the south of San Francisco. The nearest aligned fault to the north, the Rodgers Creek Fault, is considered by many to be an extension of the Hayward Fault Zone. These five fault structures are the major known active slip-strike faults associated with the relative motion of the Pacific Plate to the North American Plate in California at the latitude of the San Francisco Bay Area. (more...)