Hayward implosion:The US Geological Survey estimates a 63 percent chance of a major earthquake hitting the Bay area in the next 30 years. On Saturday, scientists measured the shaking caused by a controlled demolition of a building to better understand where the ground might shake most.

With a series of quick blasts and a cloud of dust a 13-story building on the Cal State-East Bay campus crashed to the ground Saturday morning as scientists monitored the impact on the nearby Hayward Fault.

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The controlled implosion on a hillside above the San Francisco Bay also attracted scores of gawkers eager to feel the magnitude 2.0 shockwaves scientists predicted would occur from 12,500 tons of crashing concrete and steel.

US Geological Survey scientists had placed more than 600 seismographs in concentric circles within a mile of the building to pick up the vibrations.

They hope the unique experiment will help map out where the ground might shake the most when the big one hits, though the data collected Saturday will take at least three months to analyze.

"When that building dropped we should have gotten a nice, continuous signal for eight to 10 seconds," said Rufus Catchings, the lead USGS scientist on the project, minutes after the dust settled.

Catchings said he was happy with the execution of the implosion that caused the distinctive building on an East Bay hillside to collapse from view in fewer than five seconds.

"It was so fast it was over before you knew it," said Sally Lopez, 71, who met her husband when both were students at the school and came from nearby Fremont to watch the building drop.

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Controlled demolition helps scientists predict the next 'Big One'

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