A magnitude 2.6 earthquake struck Newport Seashore on Wednesday afternoon, leading to weak shaking in Orange County.
The epicenter of the quake, simply southeast of Costa Mesa, was beneath Mariners Park. Weak shaking was felt in Irvine, Santa Ana, Huntington Seashore, Backyard Grove, Tustin and Fountain Valley, in accordance with individuals who reported the shaking to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Did You Really feel It? web site.
The earthquake struck at 1:46 p.m. and occurred close to mapped traces of the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon fault zone. In Santa Ana, one individual stated they felt the earthquake as beginning with the slowest of rumbles, then a fast jolt.
The Newport-Inglewood fault has lengthy been thought-about one in every of Southern California’s prime seismic hazard zones as a result of it runs underneath a number of the area’s most densely populated areas, from the Westside of Los Angeles to the Orange County coast.
The final main quake on that fault occurred in 1933 — the magnitude 6.4 Lengthy Seashore earthquake. That temblor — the deadliest in fashionable Southern California historical past — resulted in “very robust” shaking, or degree 7 on the Modified Mercalli Depth Scale, in Lengthy Seashore, Huntington Seashore and Compton.
The 1933 quake left practically 120 lifeless and brought about $40 million in property harm.
Scientists have stated that current observations counsel earthquakes as massive as magnitudes 6.8 to 7.5 have struck the Newport-Inglewood/Rose Canyon fault system, which stretches from the border of Beverly Hills and Los Angeles by Lengthy Seashore and the Orange County coast to downtown San Diego.
Analysis printed in 2017 steered the Newport-Inglewood fault is extra lively than beforehand thought. If a magnitude 7.5 earthquake did rupture alongside that fault system, such a temblor would carry huge harm all through Southern California. An earthquake of magnitude 7 would hit areas of Los Angeles west of downtown notably arduous.
The 2017 research uncovered proof that main earthquakes on the fault centuries in the past had been so violent they brought about a piece of Seal Seashore close to the Orange County coast to fall 1½ to three toes in a matter of seconds.
Wednesday’s earthquake was the fifth of magnitude 2.0 and above that has struck the Southern California metro space within the final 5 days.
Earlier Wednesday, a magnitude 2.2 earthquake struck beneath the San Gabriel Mountains, lower than two miles from the northern fringe of Rancho Cucamonga in San Bernardino County. That earthquake, which was down from an earlier estimate of two.5, struck at 5:01 a.m.
A pair of earthquakes hit the jap Los Angeles neighborhood of El Sereno on Sunday and Tuesday. The primary was a magnitude 3.4, placing at 9:56 a.m. Sunday, a pair blocks south of Huntington Drive and Japanese Avenue. The second was a magnitude 2.8, down from an earlier estimate of magnitude 3, and hit at 3:05 p.m. Tuesday. Its preliminary estimated epicenter was revised from beneath the Elephant Hill Open Area to farther south, about 700 toes northwest of Sunday’s quake.
On Friday, at 10:26 a.m., a magnitude 3.6 earthquake — down from an unique estimate of three.8 — occurred with an epicenter simply north of the Ojai Valley, inflicting weak shaking to be felt from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles.
It’s not unusual for Southern California to see small earthquakes. Most don’t result in bigger, catastrophic quakes. And though some bigger earthquakes are preceded by smaller quakes, that’s not all the time the case.
It’s merely unimaginable to know whether or not small earthquakes are “foreshocks” to a bigger quake earlier than the extra highly effective occasion strikes.
Occasions employees author Gustavo Arellano contributed to this report.
