The San Andreas Fault, the continental transform fault that runs roughly 800 miles through California in the United States, and which forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, is to be mended next year.
The troublesome fault line, first identified in 1895 by Professor Andrew Lawson, lies deep beneath the Earth's surface, and was directly to blame for the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
The fault is thought to generate earthquake activity every 140-160 years, but the residents of SF have been petitioning since a relatively minor tremor in 1989, for something to be done about it.
An earthquake that struck Samoa on Tuesday, and two more on successive days on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Wednesday and Thursday, have highlighted the dangers of earthquakes, and the SF authorities today released a statement saying that, as early as February 2010, work would begin on the fault.
This morning at the San Francisco Employment Exchange, workers armed with hammers and chisels queued for three blocks in an effort to secure contracts on the project.