Fears are mounting that the catastrophic “Big One” earthquake could rip through California, killing thousands, after 70 quakes rocked the deadly Ring of Fire in just 48 hours.

A cluster of 16 “significant” quakes — above magnitude 4.5 — hit yesterday following 53 that shook the region along the disaster zone on Sunday.

The earthquakes rattled Indonesia, Bolivia, Japan and Fiji but didn’t reach the western coast of the US, which sits on the horseshoe-shaped “Ring of Fire” fault line.

The Ring of Fire has caused a number of devastating earthquakes over the years and is where two of the Earth’s huge tectonic plates meet.

It’s a string of 452 volcanoes and sites of high seismic activity that encircle the Pacific Ocean.

Fears are now growing that California’s “Big One” could be on the way — a 9.0-magnitude earthquake that would tear through the West Coast and cause a tsunami.

Experts have claimed California is overdue for a large earthquake and that shaking around the Ring of Fire could be a warning.

Several magnitude-7 quakes have struck the state in the last century, with the most deadly coming in San Francisco in 1906, when 3,000 were killed.

Richard Aster, a professor of geophysics at Colorado State University, recently wrote: “The earthquake situation in California is actually more dire than people who aren’t seismologists like myself may realize.”

“Although many Californians can recount experiencing an earthquake, most have never personally experienced a strong one. For major events, with magnitudes of seven or greater, California is actually in an earthquake drought.”

The recent tremors were recorded by the United States Geological Survey, which revealed that Fiji was worst hit, with five earthquakes above magnitude 4.5 since Monday morning.

An 8.2-magnitude earthquake also struck in the Pacific Ocean close to Fiji and Tonga on Sunday but was too deep to cause significant damage.

On Tuesday night, Venezuela and Trinidad were smashed by a 7.3 quake that tore restaurants apart and littered cars with debris and bricks.

Director Apete Soro told Reuters: “We are monitoring the situation and some places felt it, but it was a very deep earthquake.”

The “Big One” refers to a large-scale earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction, which could rip through California and the West Coast in mere minutes.

If Cascadia were to have a large-scale quake, the resulting tsunami would kill more than 11,000 and injure more than 26,000 people, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has warned.

Cascadia’s last quake was on Jan. 26, 1700, with an estimated magnitude of 8.7 to 9.2 and involved the Juan de Fuca Plate from mid-Vancouver Island south along the Pacific Northwest coast as far as Northern California.

The length of the fault rupture was approximately 620 miles and it caused a tsunami that reached the coast of Japan.