The 5.4 magnitude earthquake that struck near Los Angeles yesterday just before noon was felt as far east as Las Vegas and as far south as San Diego. Since the quake, whose epicenter was about 28 miles southeast of Los Angeles near the affluent suburb of Chino Hills and 8.5 miles beneath the Earth's surface, there have been nearly 50 aftershocks, most of them small, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Although the quake was one of the strongest to hit urban Southern California since the deadly 6.7 magnitude Northridge quake in 1994, it didn't cause any severe damage or major injury. So Southern California residents are exhaling with relief—that for now, they've eluded The Big One.
But seismologists, who've concluded that this jolt was not tied directly to any of Southern California's major fault lines, insist it could have been much more destructive and that it was just a reminder that the big one is indeed still looming. Graham Kent, a seismologist and geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, studies the complex series of fault lines that run beneath California's surface. NEWSWEEK'S Jamie Reno spoke with Kent about this quake and the threat that possible future quakes pose to Southern California. Excerpts:
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Does this quake give us any clues about future Southern California quakes in terms of when or where?
We tell people it's a very low probability that an earthquake like this might be a foreshock, but I think the more responsible way of looking at it is that this quake is a reminder. The L.A. Basin is fraught with potential hazards, the thrusting event as well as the large strike event, and we've been lucky. The San Andreas Fault on average ruptures every 150 to 200 years over the last several thousand years, and it has not ruptured for about 340 years. So every morning we wake up we set a new record between large ruptures.
Would you say Los Angeles dodged a bullet with this event?
Yes, thrust faults than can be a 7-ish event, this one got up to 5.4. But the point is they are there and people need to be prepared. The way I look at events like this, other than making our afternoon crazy, is that this is really just a strong reminder to people that earthquakes can and will occur in this region that are 100 times larger in energy; some day the big one will in fact occur. These are reminders to people to be prepared with food and water. Have your wall units bolted. Do your kids know where to go? People throughout Southern California should have all of this already planned. Unfortunately, people don't ask us about this stuff when we don't have an earthquake, so during times like these we use you
to answer the public's questions and remind them that we need to be prepared.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/149525
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