Seismic experts warn there is a 62 percent chance of the "big one", measuring at least 6.7 on the Richter Scale, hitting San Francisco and a 70 percent chance of Los Angeles being brought to its knees by a quake with a magnitude of at least 7.2 in the next 30 years.

Such a huge temblor in Los Angeles could kill up to 18,000 people, leave 140,000 to 735,000 others homeless and cause more than 250 billion dollars damage to America's second biggest city, the greater metropolitan area of which is home to 17 million people, geologists estimate.

"The big earthquake is an absolute certainty, it's just a question of when," said Lucile Jones the US Geological Survey's chief scientist in Southern California.

The shambolic operation to rescue and evacuate hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents from the flood-ruined city following Hurricane Katrina has forced California to review emergency plans and seek funding to improve key defences, especially levees protecting its central valley from flooding by the sea.

"Katrina and (Hurricane) Rita have caused us to look at evacuation planning because we have never had reason to evacuate thousand of people," Henry Renteria, director of the California governor's Office of Emergency Services, told AFP.

"We have to look at how we would evacuate people, how to communicate with people and at if they need to be evacuated," he said, adding that while plans were constantly updated there were "areas where improvements can be made."

More than 1,100 people are confirmed dead and more than one million were displaced in the wake of Katrina, while Rita left at least 10 dead when it hit the US Gulf Coast last weekend, forcing three million to flee their homes.

The spectre of the death, destruction and mass evacuations has jolted California officials into re-evaluating evacuation plans for their largest cities.

Sprawling Los Angeles is built on a spider's web of quake faultlines that could force hundreds of thousands out of their homes. The southern California city's last major temblor, a magnitude of 6.7, killed 57 people in 1994.

In the northern hub of San Francisco, last hit by a 7.1 magnitude quake in 1989 that killed 63 people, many of the area's 776,000 residents are dependent on two key bridges if they are forced to flee a disaster in the city.

Disaster experts and officials also said they were re-examining how to maintain communications following the "big one" and how to boost coordination between federal, state and local government authorities to avoid the chaos that hampered the rescue effort in New Orleans.

Nervous Californians alarmed at the plight of New Orleans are meanwhile bracing to help themselves in the event of a cataclysm, with local media publishing extensive lists of what to include in family emergency kits.

"People need to take care of themselves," said Bob Anderson, senior engineering geologist for the California Seismic Safety Commission. "You can be on your own for several days and relying on the federal government to do things is not good enough," he said, calling on citizens to stock up on enough water and non-perishable food to last at least three days.

Disaster expert Susan Tubbesing of the non-profit Earthquake Engineering Research Institute near San Francisco said the Golden State's preparedness for a major quake had been undermined by the US war on terror launched after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"We have a huge population at risk and there simply hasn't been the resources of either individuals or resources," she said. "The funds that have come into California since 9/11 have been disproportionately aimed at homeland security so that programmes that we used to have for earthquakes don't exist anymore."

Areas of key concern are ageing buildings, including hospitals and dormitories, across the state and the dykes that protect central California, which supplies two thirds of California's water needs, from the Pacific Ocean. "We expect to see the failure of the levees in an earthquake," Tubbesing said just weeks after New Orleans levees failed catastrophically. "We are very concerned."

California lawmakers have called for 90 million dollars promised by the federal government to strengthen the levees to be delivered immediately. But while the most populous US state prepares for the worst, officials and experts said the aftermath of catastrophe or terror attack would be better handled and easier to cope with in disaster-prone California.

"California cities are not in the same situation, we have neighbourhoods that would be affected of course but not a whole city," Renteria said.

"I don't think we would see the same kind of debacle here after a large event," Tubbesing said, pointing out that cooperation between various levels of government was generally good.

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