North America is home to some of the biggest earthquakes: How you can prepare for US tremors

The west coast, including California, is capable of the largest magnitude events, Hatem said.

The state sits on the San Andreas fault, which is the 750 mile-split between two plates — the Pacific and North American plates — sliding past each other.

Previous earthquakes give researchers an idea of what the fault is capable of, Hatem said.

She noted the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and the 1857 earthquake in Fort Tejon of southern California, both of which were a 7.9 magnitude.

It's impossible to say when the next major event will occur, but it is inevitable, Hatem said.

"We do know how frequently these earthquakes have occurred in the past," she said. "We know that they occur in the order of hundreds of years. But we can't really say, 'Okay, from the last earthquake plus 100 years is when we'll expect the next one."

Because California is better equipped with up-to-date building codes and standards, the impact won't be quite as large as the earthquake in Turkey but it can still be devastating.

According to a 2008 report from the USGS that simulated a "Shakeout Scenario," a 7.8 magnitude in southern California can bring a death toll of 1,800 people, with most deaths concentrated in Los Angeles County.

About 50,000 people could be injured and between 500,000 to 1 million people could be displaced from their homes.

Above the San Andreas fault is the Cascadia subduction zone, Hatem said.

It's a convergent plate boundary in which the oceanic plate is sliding underneath Washington, Oregon, and the northernmost parts of California. To compare, the San Andreas fault is made up of plates slipping laterally.

The Cascadia Fault is Oregon's most active subduction zone, according to the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, and produces magnitude 8 to 9 earthquakes every 450 to 500 years on average.

The last time an earthquake in that range of magnitude hit the state was in 1700.

There are several other faults in Oregon that produce magnitude 5 to 6 earthquakes, according to the state department.

Washington is also vulnerable to the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

While the state lies on faults lines that are similar to the faults in Turkey, in that they lie shallow in the Earth's crust, the major earthquake will most likely come from the Cascadia fault, Harold Tobin, a director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network told KUOW radio station.

It's uncertain when that "big one" will come, however.

"We think that it doesn't happen very often, centuries apart. But, we don't know," Tobin told KUOW.

Near the southern coast of Alaska is the Alaskan subduction zone, Hatem said, in which the Pacific plate is being pushed underneath the state.

"Each year, the Pacific Plate pushes a couple of inches towards Alaska, which is generally considered to be part of the North American Plate," according to the University of Alaska Fairbanks's earthquake center.

In 1964, a magnitude 9.2 earthquake struck south-central Alaska, making the event the largest earthquake in North American history and the second largest worldwide.

Though the west coast is most vulnerable to "The Big One," there are also a few areas throughout the midwestern and eastern US that experience earthquakes more frequently than other areas.

According to Michigan Tech, "the most earthquake-prone areas include Charleston, South Carolina, eastern Massachusetts, the St. Lawrence River area, and the central Mississippi River Valley."

"Earthquakes can happen in the eastern part of the US. They're just far less frequent than that are on the west," Hatem said, noting that they probably also won't experience the same magnitude as events on the west coast.