![]() ![]() Regardless, it is still important to understand how to stay safe in such scenarios, as you really never know. They can be smaller or larger than the first. The quake was centered in Carson, south of downtown, but was felt across Los Angeles County - as far. The risk for a significant earthquake hitting southern California on Wednesday night is small, but according to Chaussard, there is no rule for the size of secondary quakes. A preliminary 4.3-magnitude earthquake rocked the Los Angeles area on Friday evening. But those numbers could be dwarfed by a major quake in the future. In 1994 a 6.7-magnitude quake hit the Northridge area of the city, badly damaging freeways, killing more than 70 people and causing 20 billion in damages. In most cases, earthquakes come in clusters, with earthquakes before the main quake called foreshocks and those after called aftershocks. Earthquakes have always been part of Los Angeles past and its future. ![]() “Ideally, if near a exit, the safest place to be during an earthquake is outside and away from any structure,” said Chaussard.Įarthquakes are the result of a release of energy caused by friction between fault lines beneath the surface. when the 6.7-magnitude quake struck the San Fernando Valley, a densely populated area of Los Angeles located 20 miles northeast of the city’s downtown. “That means drop on the floor, seek cover under a desk or a structure that would protect you from falling objects and hold on until the shaking has stopped,” said Chaussard. However, she emphasized that it is safer to get out of bed and seek shelter, if possible. Estelle Chaussard, professor of geology and geophysics at the University at Buffalo told Inverse that this tactic was useful, as most injuries from an earthquake are caused by falling debris. Vulnerable pipelines carrying fuel and natural gas and overhead electricity lines through the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County could explode, threatening the power grid.Dr. Under the simulation’s scenario, freeways linking the region to Las Vegas and Phoenix could be destroyed, as could the aqueducts that bring in most of L.A. County, could cause 1,800 deaths, with hundreds killed in building collapses, according to a simulation of such a temblor released by the USGS in 2008. The effects of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake - which would be 45 times stronger than the Northridge quake - depend on the fault’s location.Ī quake of that magnitude on the southern San Andreas fault, rupturing between the Salton Sea near the Mexico border and passing through Palm Springs and into Lake Hughes, north of Santa Clarita in L.A. Here’s a basic primer on the science of earthquakes. Earlier estimates said the fault zone could generate up to a magnitude 7.4 earthquake, but the new study shows it could produce a quake as strong as 7.8.Ĭalifornia How earthquakes happen: The science of a shakeīefore we can prepare for the Big One, we have to know what “one” is. Scientists found the fault could produce a quake of a magnitude comparable to one from the San Andreas fault. The analysis determined the fault system, which runs beneath numerous neighborhoods as well as the ports of Long Beach and L.A., has a much larger surface area that could rupture in the same seismic event, making it capable of a far more powerful quake than was previously known. It previously was thought to be a segmented network of smaller faults, but a closer look by scientists at Harvard University suggests it’s a system of interconnected, closely spaced planar fractures stretching from the Santa Monica Bay to the waters off Dana Point. ![]() Known as the Palos Verdes fault zone, the system runs deep beneath the Palos Verdes Peninsula. A fault system running nearly 70 miles along the coast of Los Angeles and Orange counties has the potential to trigger a magnitude 7.8 earthquake, according to a new study that is the latest to highlight the seismic threats facing Southern California. ![]()
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