Tag: LAS VEGAS

Magnitude 5.5 quake hits shaky California desert region

Associated Press – June 3, 2020

RIDGECREST, Calif. (AP) — A magnitude 5.5 earthquake has jolted the region of California desert where a powerful quake last summer was followed by thousands of aftershocks.

The U.S. Geological Survey says Wednesday’s quake hit at a fairly shallow depth shortly after 6:30 p.m. and was centered 13.6 miles (22 kilometers) north of the small city of Ridgecrest.

A dispatcher with the Ridgecrest Police Department said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury.

The quake was felt as a bump and rolling motion in a high-rise building in downtown Las Vegas. Local television news broadcasts stopped as anchors reported seeing lights sway in their studios.

It also shook buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

A magnitude 7.1 quake on July 5, 2019, and a magnitude 6.4 foreshock the day before strongly shook the region.

Damage from those quakes occurred to facilities on the sprawling Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake as well as in the nearby communities of Trona and Ridgecrest.

Seismologist Lucy Jones tweeted that Wednesday’s quake was “a large late aftershock” of last July’s activity. Among the many aftershocks, a handful have reached the magnitude-5 level.

https://news.yahoo.com

More than 500 earthquakes rattle western Nevada after 6.5 hit less than a week ago

Amy Graff – May 20, 2020

The ground has come alive in a pocket of western Nevada.

A magnitude-6.5 earthquake rocked a remote region 35 miles west of Tonopah on May 15 and hundreds of aftershocks have followed — an event this corner of the county hasn’t seen in over half a century.

The initial big quake struck at 4:03 a.m. last Friday east of the Sierra Nevada, roughly halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was the largest to hit Nevada in 66 years and caused cracking along US 95 in Esmeralda County and broke some windows in Tonopah but, because this area is mostly unpopulated, damage was minimal.

A dozen aftershocks of 4.5 and above — and 500 quakes of 2.5 and above — have been recorded near Tonopah since the 6.5 quake. As recently as Wednesday morning, a 5.0 temblor struck.

“This is your classic shock-aftershock sequence,” said Dr. Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Laboratory. “This is similar to what you’d expect in the aftermath of the big quake.”

The 6.5 quake and following aftershocks occurred in the Walker Lane Seismic Region, a fault zone that roughly aligns with the Nevada-California border from Death Valley to Pyramid Lake.

Across time, Nevada has had an abundance of earthquakes and is considered the third most actively seismic state. The largest earthquake in state history was a magnitude 7.3 in 1915 and the next biggest was a 7.1 in 1932. In 1954 alone, the state saw five earthquakes of magnitude 6.5 or greater.

“And then it just went cold for 66 years,” Kent said. “We would tell people it’s all going to end and now it has. We knew sooner or later it would break and it broke in an area that’s not that populated.”

https://www.sfgate.com