California was rocked by an earthquake early Friday, marking the fourth to hit the state in over 24 hours.

A magnitude 2.8 was detected 180 miles north of Los Angeles, where fires are blazing, at 3:32am PT, which hit three hours after another 2.8 in San Jose.

The latest earthquake registered a 2.8 magnitude and occurred approximately 15 miles southeast of Avenal at 3:32 a.m. The US Geological Survey also reported a third 2.8 magnitude San Bernardino County on Thursday and a 3.0 magnitude hit Salton City Wednesday.

The four quakes occurred along the San Andreas fault – the volatile boundary between two tectonic plates: the Pacific plate and the North American plate. It runs 800 miles along the coast of California.

Scientists have said that the West Coast is overdue for a massive quake along the San Andreas fault, which would measure magnitude 8 or higher.

While no injuries or damage was reported, the seismic activity followed a deadly stretch of wildfires in Southern California that began on January 7. Killing at least 25 people, the series of 30 wildfires has been reduced substantially to four fires as of Thursday. Two of the largest remain active.

Both the southern and northern sections of the San Andreas fault have a roughly equal likelihood of generating a high-magnitude earthquake in the next few decades. 

The ‘Big One’ would measure an 8.0 magnitude or above, causing roughly 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage, according to the Great California Shakeout.

Experts are ‘fairly confident that there could be a pretty large earthquake at some point in the next 30 years,’ Angie Lux, project scientist for Earthquake Early Warning at the Berkeley Seismology Lab, told DailyMail.co

Friday’s quake reached an intensity level of IV on the Community Internet Intensity Map, a level that indicates light shaking. 

As of Friday morning, nearly 100 people submitted reports to the USGS, nothing that they had felt the earthquake. 

Around the same number of people felt the other three earthquakes in the last few days.

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