Plot

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 in 1994, when he died trying to save her in a live quake. Even as a teenager Molly had keen interest in Geology and was conducting experiments to test her theories, like recreating craters formed during volcanic eruptions. During the earthquake, Molly and her father were standing under the balcony of their house, when a wooden beam crashes and traps Molly's leg. Her father frees her leg and throws her away from the house, just as the entire balcony crashes on top of him, leading to his death.

Molly grows up to become a seismologist. She lives in LA & studies the San Andreas fault. She installs 19 seismic sensors across the fault & tracks the readings regularly. 6 months later, she feels something big is going down as her sensors have measured 12 M1 quakes (measuring 1.0 or lower on the Richter Scale) in 72 hours. She lives with her husband Hank (Lane Townsend) and stepdaughter Ali (Grace Van Dien). Hank is a helicopter pilot who offers rides of the city to tourists on his charter service.

Ali is angry that the family lives way outside of downtown LA and it takes a long time to get into the city. Molly argues that downtown LA will be one of the first areas to be hit in the event of a major quake on the San Andreas Fault. Ali is seeing a boyfriend and Molly doesn't approve of it. Ali has just started a new job at the Sjyline hotel in downtown LA.

Molly is a professor at the Pacific Coast College & 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 that is going to hit in 2.5 minutes (and she evacuates an entire restaurant in anticipation), and she is proven right when the earthquake arrives, but just a few seconds late.

Hank was in the air with 2 tourists, and notices major rock-slide events across the entire coastline.

Molly's data then shows that the same day the whole California 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 begs Ali that her hotel is only rated to survive quakes up to an 8.0 and says that downtown LA is a seismic amplification corridor. 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.

Cell towers start to go down and therefore mobile phone connectivity starts to suffer. Molly uses a landline and tries her colleague Chet Michaels (David Alan Graf) at CalTech to announce a Level 4 evacuation (which means moving 13 million people out of LA), but they refuse to do so, not believing her theory. Molly sends her data to Chet to match it with the actual data. Nick offers to help Molly get to Ali & rescue her. Molly realizes that Nick is Ali's boyfriend. 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. Nick's van breaks down and he has to steal another car. The bridges on the way are collapsing and the Pacific Coastal Highway has an avalanche which sink a large portion of the road.

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. Chet realizes that the quakes are not aftershocks, but fore-shocks to the big M12 coming in later in the day. 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 charter 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.