Los Angeles quake, though mild, stirs things up
LOS ANGELES — The latest earthquake to hit the nation’s second-largest city was a garden-variety temblor by California standards, rumbling through on a Sunday evening when most residents were home eating dinner or watching TV.
The magnitude-4.7 earthquake shattered more nerves than glass, and scientists say it could have been worse.
The temblor, centered three miles east of Los Angeles International Airport, appeared to have ruptured a fault under the city that is capable of producing a damaging magnitude-7 earthquake.
The shaking Sunday lasted about 15 seconds, but it was felt across a wide swath of Southern California, which has not had a disastrous temblor since the magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake in 1994.
Sunday’s earthquake released 1,000 times less energy than Northridge.
No major injuries were reported, though a person at a Starbucks in the coastal community of Torrance was taken to the emergency room with minor injuries. The earthquake caused minor property damage in beach towns south of the airport.
The rattling spurred some to think about earthquake preparedness.
Long Beach resident Charlene Ebright said she hadn’t updated her earthquake emergency kit in eight years but now plans to do so.
Scientists poring through data say the earthquake appeared to have caused slippage of the Newport-Inglewood fault, one of a half-dozen major fault lines crisscrossing the heavily populated Los Angeles Basin. While the fault, which extends more than 46 miles from Beverly Hills southeast to Orange County, is not considered as dangerous as the San Andreas Fault to the east, scientists are worried because of its proximity to cities.
“The fault is very centrally located. That’s obviously why so many people felt it. It’s right in the L. A. Basin,” said Susan Hough, scientist in charge of the U. S. Geological Survey’s Pasadena office.
Rupture along the Newport-Inglewood fault caused the 1933 magnitude-6.4 Long Beach earthquake that killed 120 people and caused more than $50 million in damage.
Studies have shown the Newport-Inglewood fault is capable of unleashing a magnitude-7 temblor, though scientists are unsure how often such big earthquakes occur.
A 1995 analysis by a Stanford University professor and a risk management firm estimated that a magnitude-7 temblor on the Newport-Inglewood fault could cause as much as $220 billion in damage.
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