Originally Posted By: hikermor
I paid a gemologist good money to tell me there are no faults under my building.....

Unfortunately, many faults are "hidden" until, say, some seismic activity reveals their presence. Take the LA basin, for instance. There are many new faults discovered in the past couple decades. For example, geologists think the Puente Hills Fault can cause significant damage to the LA area but it was only discovered in 1999.

The rapid expansion of fracking has also revealed many new faults and fault systems that were unknown before, too.