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Strongest earthquake in years rattles Southern California
- cgoecknerwald 7y agoI felt this (near Caltech, Pasadena). I spent the entire duration trying to figure out what was shaking my desk. I hope this doesn't trigger anything larger. Does anybody know if this was close enough to the fault line to possibly affect anything? EDIT: I see they have updated the article to a 1 in 20 chance. [1] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/ [2] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443095/map https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443095...
- iscrewyou 7y agoIt was felt all the way out to the west coast (which is where the big fault line is). To answer your question, only time will tell.
- tanderson92 7y agoI was only a few miles away in San Gabriel and did not feel a thing; I wonder if the SGV blocked any of the waves. Wish I had come to campus early today to feel that one.
- Stratoscope 7y agoFor anyone wondering, SGV refers to the San Gabriel Valley. (Correct me if I got it wrong.)
- seandougall 7y agoYou got it right! (Though Pasadena is also in the SGV.) I felt it in South Pasadena, but it was very gentle; would have been easy to miss if I hadn’t been sitting still when it happened.
- ryanhuff 7y agoApparently, mountains buffer the waves. SGV is bordered by a San Gabriel mountain range. So, your experience sounds reasonable to me.
- panlana 7y agoI'm in the mountains in San Bernadino (Lake Arrowhead / Big Bear) and I felt it pretty good. Shook the door to the bathroom. Thought my wife was being impatient.
- rjurney 7y agoSmall earthquakes are a good thing, not a bad thing. They relieve stress on the fault without having a major slippage. I think.
- wwweston 7y agoThe stress-relief model makes sense to me, but apparently it doesn't work that way: https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-prevent-large-earthquakes-13541155.php https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-p...
- FPGAhacker 7y agoIt does, and the article affirms this. However it's a question of relative magnitude. The energy dissipated by the smaller quakes is dwarfed in comparison to larger quakes. The energy of a 5.5 quake is on the order of 1/1000th the energy of a mag 7 quake.
- rjurney 7y agoI guess things didn't end up working that way today. Or maybe the 6.4 prevented the 7.1 from being even stronger :(
- SubiculumCode 7y agoLucky in middle nowhere
- cgoecknerwald 7y ago"Only 10 percent of California's 7 million plus homeowners have earthquake insurance – and the number has dropped by more than half since the deadly quake" (2014) You can get an estimate for an earthquake insurance policy with the California Earthquake Authority. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/why-do-so-few-california-homeowners-have-earthquake-insurance-n227711 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigations/why-do-so-few-ca... [2] https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/ https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/
- Zafira 7y agoI understand why people keep bring up earthquake insurance, but it's not that many of us haven't considered it. It can be expensive to the extent that you are better off reinforcing your home rather than spending any money on said insurance. "The expensive deductible related to earthquake insurance are sometimes as high as 15% of the value of the home, which has many homeowners giving the insurance a second thought."[1] Most insurance companies bailed out of the business of earthquake insurance after Northridge because when it happens, the claims are enormous. The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake was an indirect factor that lead to the Panic of 1907 due to the high volume of insurance claims. [1]https://www.marketwatch.com/story/25-years-after-bay-area-quake-most-dont-have-earthquake-insurance-2014-10-17 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/25-years-after-bay-area-qu...
- Rebelgecko 7y agoWhen I looked into it, adding on earthquake insurance would cost more than my regular homeowners insurance, and like you said would still have a huge deductible without even covering most of my belongings
- sizzzzlerz 7y agoFurthermore, if a big quake happens, insurance companies are going to go broke paying out claims. Homeowners are going to be at the back of the line meaning most of them aren't going to see a dime.
- 7y ago
- dmckeon 7y agoLuckily, this was far from population centers - epicenter about 10 miles from Ridgecrest, a town of 30,000 people just south of Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, and just east of US 395, about 80 miles east of Bakersfield. Informative USGS links include: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443183/executive https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443183... Select "View Neaby Seismicity" to see the 47+ recent quakes in this area.
- classichasclass 7y agoIt was pretty close to Trona. Having driven through Trona, life sucks in Trona and today it sucked a lot worse. Lots of shaking here in the greater LA foothills, but no damage (though this house does have earthquake insurance).
- alex_young 7y agoAh Trona. Not much out there to be honest. Here's what the view from Trona Pinnacles looks like: https://photos.app.goo.gl/LrML8TsBbZoW79t1A https://photos.app.goo.gl/LrML8TsBbZoW79t1A
- quattrofan 7y agoCould be Mars
- ralusek 7y agoI feel like we're woefully underprepared for earthquakes. It feels like pushing away technical debt on a societal scale.
- eof 7y agoI think the lack of damage from this shows a high degree of preparation. This same earthquake 50 years ago would have likely been much worse.
- ngold 7y agoI was in Los Gatos for the epicenter of the 89 quake that was 6.7 I believe. It was pretty bad. It looks like this was handled much better.
- foota 7y ago6.7 is a lot stronger than a 6.4 though, as well.
- iscrewyou 7y agoIf we are splitting hair, a 6.4 can technically be more dangerous compared to a 6.7 if the waves and the oscillation of the building coincide and amplify.
- alex_young 7y agoThe Richter Scale is 10 x per full point. A 6.7 should be 4 times the strength of a 6.4
- pkaye 7y agoI was living in east bay during that time and just returned home from school. When the earthquake hit I could see the road create waves like a flipped rug. Fortunately no damage to our house.
- 7y ago
- notatoad 7y ago>Gallegos said that the dried chiles hanging from a hook on her kitchen wall were all shaking. "It was surreal." was this really the best anecdote they could find to include in the story?
- reaperducer 7y agoIt happened 30 minutes before. I doubt the reporter had time to survey every person in a lesser-populated 500 square mile area.
- squarefoot 7y agoI don't know, but anyway... If you happen to be under dried chiles when they shake, be sure to keep your eyes closed because the pain could make an earthquake much more pleasant. Been there done that, and that pain lasted hours... ouch! On a more serious note, the anecdote might suggest that the earthquake produced very high frequency oscillations. Dried plants are relatively light and stiff so that a larger but slow displacement might be harder to spot by looking at them, but they could be much better at transmitting fast oscillations.
- schoen 7y ago> Been there done that, and that pain lasted hours... ouch! What an unusual form of earthquake injury!
- squarefoot 7y agoWell, a fault was involved, although not a geological one:) Read as: don't pick dried chiles directly from below, or at least close the damn eyes...
- schoen 7y agoOh, I see! I thought you meant that you'd actually experienced getting chili pepper in your eyes during an earthquake.
- 7y ago
- appleshore 7y agoI didn’t feel it in West LA but my cat became extremely spooked. He was in an ultra hunting mode, flat to the ground and scanning the room. I never seen him act like this especially for this duration. He wouldn’t eat treats or respond to anything. I wonder if it was just the vibration of the ground or if there’s some other factor alerting him.
- kenhwang 7y agoI felt it pretty clearly in West LA. My dog decided to roll onto her back to get a massage out of the earthquake.
- point78 7y agoGot to love the difference between cats and dogs
- branchless 7y agoAre you sure on the exact time? Was the cat nervous during or before? Has your cat been acting suspiciously in recent days? I think the cats are in on this.
- tzs 7y agoCats can probably feel or hear the p waves, which humans usually do not notice, and which travel faster than the more noticeable (to humans) s waves. Here's a video of a bunch of cats in a cat cafe in Japan whose sleep is interrupted by an earthquake. They all wake up and start looking around about 9 seconds before the shaking starts, probably due to sensing the p wave. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ-p9qOhBv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJ-p9qOhBv4
- cardiffspaceman 7y agoSo it was apparently widely felt but Ridgecrest-China Lake, where it seems to have been felt the most, is not very close to the major populations. You can see this from cgoecknerwald's second link showing the locale of one of the major aftershocks. [1] https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443095/map https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci38443095... to save slight scrolling
- etxm 7y agoI saw a picture of a pinot that fell off a shelf and broke.
- johnnycab 7y agoTry an entire liquor store: https://twitter.com/zomo_abd/status/1146843583988658176/video/1 https://twitter.com/zomo_abd/status/1146843583988658176/vide...
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThis liquor store got pretty messed up: https://twitter.com/zomo_abd/status/1146843583988658176 https://twitter.com/zomo_abd/status/1146843583988658176 edit: someone posted this a few seconds before me but i'll leave it up for posterity
- reverite 7y agoThere's a few articles that go into a loosely defined faulting area dubbed the Walker Lane[1][2][3] in which it's theorized that the East Pacific Rise (a rift), under the Gulf of California, may be expanding directly north. I know some geologists were surprised at first at the 7.4 Landers earthquake in 1994, and the article goes into that the Walker Lane seems to follow US 395, so I wonder if this is just a continuing extension of geologic activity associated with it. [1] https://volcanohotspot.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/splitting-north-america-the-walker-lane-part-1-the-tectonics/ https://volcanohotspot.wordpress.com/2018/09/21/splitting-no... [2] https://www.wired.com/story/walker-lane-move-over-san-andreas-fault/ https://www.wired.com/story/walker-lane-move-over-san-andrea... [3] http://www.bldgblog.com/2019/04/walker-lane/ http://www.bldgblog.com/2019/04/walker-lane/
- casefields 7y agoThat was fascinating. Thanks for those links.
- nostrademons 7y agoNote that this quake was not on the San Andreas - it was in the Eastern California Shear Zone, a separate fault system near Death Valley. The epicenter was about 125 miles away from LA, and almost closer to Las Vegas (which also felt this quake). The limited damage was largely because it was far away from any populated areas - the nearest cities are Ridgecrest (pop 27,000) and Trona (pop < 2000).
- gregcrv 7y agoAlso the area used be have some volcanic activity which is now limited to hot springs and geothermal plants. But you can still see a lot of lava fields when you drive there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coso_Volcanic_Field https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coso_Volcanic_Field
- DoreenMichele 7y agoIt was also felt in Fresno, which is probably the furthest north large city (pop 500k) in the region. https://earthquake-report.com/2019/07/04/moderate-earthquake-southern-california-july-4-2019/ https://earthquake-report.com/2019/07/04/moderate-earthquake...
- amatecha 7y agoHuh, we also just had a 5.8 magnitude one off the coast of BC, Canada [0] around 9:30 PM last night. [0] http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/2019/20190704.0430/index-en.php http://www.earthquakescanada.nrcan.gc.ca/recent/2019/2019070...
- Rebelgecko 7y agoNot the submitter's fault, but I'm pretty sure the title is inaccurate
- enjoyyourlife 7y agoIt's not. The last earthquake with a higher magnitude in California occurred in 2010. The title is just phrased wrong.
- dawhizkid 7y agoI'm pretty sure much of SF (marina, south beach, mid soma) are partially built on landfills are considered "liquification zones" by the city.
- benmarks 7y agoI think the term you're looking for is "liquefaction map" - I only know this term because we're exposed to the risk here in Charleston, S.C.: https://sf.curbed.com/2019/4/15/18311670/earthquake-map-california-geological-survey-liquefaction https://sf.curbed.com/2019/4/15/18311670/earthquake-map-cali...
- iamtheworstdev 7y agoThat is scary to me. Should it be scary to me? In regards to liquefaction zones and earthquakes? I mean, i recently built a fence and the moisture in the ground made me conscientious of liquefaction when tamping for my gravel and posts, how does this play out for SF in an earthquake?
- perchecriik 7y agoYou're probably looking for the "Liquefaction Hazard Maps" page for the Bay Area: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/urban/sfbay/liquefaction/sfbay/ https://earthquake.usgs.gov/hazards/urban/sfbay/liquefaction... Disclaimer: I am a geologist, but I'm not a P.G., hence all that I say on this topic is bullshit. p.s., Does your conference have beer? If it doesn't, I'm not going. I mean, I'll be so happy when AGU rolls around, because, man, I'm thirsty.
- mturmon 7y agoIt should be scary. Soil liquefaction is one of the main failure modes of small structures in earthquakes. Take a look at the map for your area to know if it matters for you.
- futureastronaut 7y agoParent used the correct term, a liquefecation map shows liquefecation zones.
- sambal 7y agoIn 2010 there was a 7.2 centered 30 miles south of the socal border that caused $1B of damage on both sides. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Baja_California_earthquake https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Baja_California_earthqu...
- tepper43 7y ago6.4 magnitude it is a lot. I hope there are no injured
- gregw2 7y agoHere's a nice USGS predictive graph of earthquake 6.7+ probability for California from 10 years ago, posted on HN a few years ago: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3027/fs2008-3027.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3027/fs2008-3027.pdf
- bitmadness 7y agoWoke me up this morning, pretty wild
- markus_zhang 7y agoHope everyone is fine. Is it actually a good thing? I mean at least the prob of larger quake declines with it.
- sandinmyjoints 7y agoWe heard, but did not feel, this near Pacifica
- peter303 7y agoThe new early warning system did not trigger in L.A. Authorities said the projected damages wasnt big enough. The warning system is supposed to give seconds to tens of seconds of warning to turn off equipment and seek cover.
- dotsarefun 7y agoGood thing tents are seismically resilient.