Earthquakes in Sacramento

Sacramento has a relatively low earthquake risk by California standards, sitting in the Central Valley away from the major coastal fault systems. There are no large active faults directly beneath the city, so it is far less exposed than the San Francisco Bay Area or Los Angeles. That said, "low" does not mean zero: buried and poorly mapped faults exist in the valley and along the Sierra Nevada foothills to the east, and strong shaking from distant Bay Area quakes can reach the capital.

The most notable regional reminder was the 1892 Vacaville-Winters earthquakes just west of Sacramento, a pair of quakes estimated near magnitude 6 that caused significant damage in nearby towns. Because much of the city and the surrounding Delta rests on soft, water-saturated soils, even moderate shaking could cause liquefaction and stress the extensive network of levees that protect low-lying areas from flooding.