Grace Van Dien, Jhey Castles, Chris Clanton, Alet Taylor
When a discredited L.A. Seismologist warns of an impending 12.7 earthquake, no one takes her seriously. Now on her own, she races desperately to get her family to safety before the earthquake breaks Los Angeles apart from the mainland.Molly Dunn (Jhey Castles) lost her dad to an earthquake, when he died trying to save her in a live quake. She grew up to become a seismologist. She lives in LA & studies the San Andreas fault. She installs 19 seismic sensors across the fault & tracks it regularly. She feels something big is going down as her sensors have measured 19 M1 quakes in 72 hrs. She lives with her husband Hank (Lane Townsend) and stepdaughter Ali (Grace Van Dien).Molly is a professor & she theorizes that her sensors allow her to predict micro quakes, which will then allow her to predict major quakes. Her students, specifically Nick (Jason Woods) don't believe her as she had predicted a quake in 2008, & she was wrong. Molly is convinced that her prediction model is flawless this time around. Her sensors predict a mild earthquake, and she is proven right when the earthquake arrives, but just a few seconds late.Her data then shows that the same day the whole Cal coastline will be hit by a series of 10.0 quakes. Molly tries to convince Ali & Hank to leave LA asap. Hank agrees, but Ali just sees this as a cheap ploy to keep her away from her boyfriend. Molly decides to rescue Ali, while Hank promises to be at the roof of Ali's hotel in his charter helicopter to rescue them both.
Molly tries her colleagues at CalTech to announce a Level 4 evacuation, but they refuse to do so, not believing her theory. Nick offers to help Molly get to Ali & rescue her. Ali gets stuck in a hotel (where she is a receptionist), elevator at the next aftershock.The phone networks are down & the entire California state is rammed by a series of M4/M5 quakes, which pose challenges for Molly & Nick to get downtown to Ali.
Molly's colleagues at Caltech finally match the actual to Molly's predictive data & see that there is a perfect match. Molly data predicts a M12 quake by the same night. Caltech gets the Govt to issue an evacuation order, which means all freeways going out of downtown are packed, making it more difficult for Nick & Molly to enter downtown.On the other side, Hank's helicopter runs out of gas, & is then struck down by a plane with panicked folks trying to leave LA. His charter customers pay for another helicopter, but insist that Hank rescues their family first, before rescuing his.Meanwhile Ali manages to get out of the elevator and starts helping old folks get out of the hotel. Molly & Nick's car is stolen by a desperate mother, trying to get her daughter out of LA. Since LA is under curfew, with orders to not let anyone enter, Molly & Nick use the subway system to try to get to Ali. They finally reach Ali & try to convince everyone to head to roof of the hotel to wait for Hank, even when the national guard has orders to take everyone to the bomb shelter.As everyone rushes to the roof, Hank reaches just in time as LA goes to pieces in the aftermath of the M12 quake.