An analysis of recent earthquake activity around New York City has found that many small faults that were believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous earthquake.
STUDY: NEW EARTHQUAKE DANGERS FOR NYC
The study's authors, who work at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Observatory in Palisades, acknowledge that the biggest earthquakes - in the 6 or 7 magnitude range - are rare in the New York City region. They say a quake of magnitude 7 probably comes about every 3,400 years.
But they note that no one knows when the last one hit, and because of the population density and the concentration of buildings and financial assets, many lives and hundreds of billions of dollars are at risk.