What Recent Earthquakes Should Teach Every Business and Property Owner in the Inland Empire
Earthquakes don’t send save-the-date cards. They arrive in the middle of a workday, a night shift, a warehouse changeover — and the businesses, landlords, and facility managers who fare best afterward are almost always the ones who prepared before, not the ones who scrambled during.
Over the past year and a half, the world has had a sobering string of reminders about just how much force the earth can release, and how far the consequences can travel. Southern California hasn’t been struck by a truly catastrophic quake recently — but the region sits on some of the most active fault systems in North America, and the “quiet period” we’re in right now is exactly the kind of thing seismologists warn shouldn’t be mistaken for safety.
Recent Earthquakes That Should Have Our Attention
Kamchatka, Russia — magnitude 8.8 (July 2025). One of the six strongest earthquakes ever instrumentally recorded, this offshore quake sent tsunami waves across the entire Pacific basin. Waves over a meter high reached Hawaii, and tsunami advisories were issued as far as Northern and Southern California, with waves recorded in Monterey and San Francisco. It’s a reminder that seismic events on one side of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” can have measurable, sometimes dangerous effects on our coastline within hours — California included.
Myanmar — magnitude 7.7 (March 2025). A shallow, fast-rupturing quake along the Sagaing Fault — a strike-slip fault mechanically very similar to the San Andreas — killed thousands and caused an estimated $11 billion in damage, much of it from older, unreinforced buildings that simply couldn’t handle the shaking. It’s one of the clearest real-world illustrations available of exactly what happens to structures that haven’t been retrofitted for seismic loads.
Closer to home, Southern California has stayed seismically restless all year. Riverside County recorded a magnitude 4.9 near Indio in January 2026. Kern and Los Angeles Counties saw a 4.1 near Valencia in July 2026. The Brawley Seismic Zone in Imperial County — long watched by seismologists as a pressure-release valve tied into the southern San Andreas system — has continued to produce swarms of moderate quakes into 2026. None of these were “the big one.” But each one is the fault system reminding us it’s active, loaded, and unpredictable in timing.
And we haven’t forgotten Northridge. The 1994 Northridge earthquake — magnitude 6.7, centered in the San Fernando Valley — killed 57 people, injured over 9,000, and caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history at the time. It remains the benchmark for what a moderate quake can do to a modern, developed region when it hits at the wrong depth, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The San Andreas Fault: The Elephant in Southern California’s Backyard
The San Andreas Fault runs roughly 800 miles through California, and its southern segment cuts directly through the region Safeworks serves — passing near San Bernardino, skirting the eastern edge of Riverside County through the Coachella Valley, and running close to the communities along the base of the San Bernardino and San Gabriel Mountains.
The southern San Andreas hasn’t produced a major rupture in roughly three centuries — longer than its typical historical recurrence interval. Seismologists with the Southern California Earthquake Center and USGS have long flagged this segment as “overdue” in probabilistic terms. The USGS’s statewide earthquake forecast (UCERF3) puts the odds of a magnitude 8.0 or larger quake somewhere in California at around 7% over the next 30 years, with a much higher likelihood of a damaging 6.7+ event somewhere in the state roughly every six years.
What makes the southern San Andreas particularly concerning for our area isn’t just magnitude potential — it’s proximity. A major rupture there would generate intense, sustained shaking across San Bernardino County, the Coachella Valley, and the eastern Los Angeles basin, and would very likely damage infrastructure, water and power delivery, and older or unreinforced structures well beyond the immediate fault trace.
What This Means for Property and Business Owners
The lesson from Myanmar, from Northridge, and from every serious earthquake in between is remarkably consistent: the buildings and businesses that suffer most are the ones that never had a professional look at their specific vulnerabilities before the shaking started. That includes:
- Unreinforced masonry and older tilt-up construction
- Unanchored or unbraced equipment, shelving, and inventory racking
- Water heaters, HVAC units, and utility connections that aren’t properly secured
- Non-structural hazards (ceiling tiles, light fixtures, signage) that become falling debris
- Missing or outdated emergency action plans and employee training
- No plan for business continuity if the site is inaccessible for days or weeks
None of these are exotic problems. All of them are fixable — usually far more affordably before an earthquake than after one.
Our Offer: A Free Earthquake Preparedness Site Review
Because we believe prevention is dramatically cheaper than recovery, Safeworks is offering a free earthquake preparedness site review for businesses and property owners in:
- San Bernardino County
- Greater Eastern Los Angeles County
- Riverside County
During this on-site review, we’ll walk your property with you and assess structural and non-structural seismic risks, equipment and utility bracing, emergency response readiness, and gaps in your current preparedness plan — then give you a clear, prioritized picture of where your exposure is and what it would take to close it.
The San Andreas isn’t going anywhere, and we can’t control when it moves. What we can control is whether your business is ready when it does.
Ready to schedule your free site review? Contact Safeworks today.