Large Earthquake Rattles Southland

LOS ANGELES, CA — A magnitude 5.5 earthquake rattled the Searles Valley at 6:33 p.m. Wednesday, according to the US Geological Survey.

Epicentered in Ridgecrest, 120 northeast of Los Angeles, the quake created strong shaking in Los Angeles and Orange County and could be felt as far south as San Diego. There were no immediate reports of damage.

Within moments of the quake, several small quakes ranging in magnitude from 2.5 to 3.2 struck in the same region.

5 Things Most People Don't Know About Earthquakes

The fault line running through the Searles Valley is the same one responsible for the magnitude 6.4 and 7.1 quakes over the Fourth of July weekend that triggered thousands of aftershocks. According to seismologist Lucy Jones, the magnitude 5.5 temblor Wednesday was yet another aftershock from the July 4 quake.

That July 4 and 5 quakes caused gas leaks and at least four fires in Ridgecrest, laying waste to several mobile homes. The magnitude 7.1 quake was one of the largest quakes to shake the southland in decades. It was preceded by a 6.4 magnitude foreshock and so many aftershocks in the following weeks that residents in the Ridgecrest area took to sleeping outside. In the year since, small and medium-sized quakes have been common in the Searles Valley.

SEE ALSO:

• Fault Capable Of 8.0 Quake Awakens Thanks To Ridgecrest
• Hundreds Of Quakes Follow The Big One As California Keeps Shaking
• Earthquake Preparedness For CA Pet Owners

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US Geological Survey's Earthquake Facts

• The largest recorded earthquake in the United States was a magnitude 9.2 that struck Prince William Sound, Alaska on Good Friday, March 28, 1964 UTC.
• The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (Mw) in Chile on May 22, 1960.
• The average rate of motion across the San Andreas Fault Zone during the past 3 million years is 56 mm/yr (2 in/yr). This is about the same rate at which your fingernails grow. Assuming this rate continues, scientists project that Los Angeles and San Francisco will be adjacent to one another in approximately 15 million years.
• It is estimated that there are 500,000 detectable earthquakes in the world each year. 100,000 of those can be felt, and 100 of them cause damage.
• It is thought that more damage was done by the resulting fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake than by the earthquake itself.
• A seiche (pronounced SAYSH) is the term for the sloshing that happens in the swimming pools of Californians during and after an earthquake.
• Each year the Southern California area has about 10,000 earthquakes. Most of them are so small that they are not felt. Only several hundred are greater than magnitude 3.0, and only about 15-20 are greater than magnitude 4.0. If there is a large earthquake, however, the aftershock sequence will produce many more earthquakes of all magnitudes for many months.
• As far as we know, there is no such thing as "earthquake weather." Statistically, there is an equal distribution of earthquakes in cold weather, hot weather, rainy weather, etc.

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