WHAT THE HECK?

There is a lot of unusual earthquake activity going on these days.

The recent Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand was a magnitude 6.3 but shook the ground with more G-Force than any earthquake ever measured.

Aside from the devastating tsunami it spurned, the huge Japan earthquake’s shaking caused liquefaction to occur in dynamic ways that had never been recorded.

And now, on the border of California and Nevada, dozens of earthquakes, many over magnitude 4, are occurring every few days in an area where there supposedly aren’t any faults.  Why is this of concern?  Many destructive earthquakes occur on previously unknown faults.

Our mapping of exact fault locations is far from complete.  To quote world-renown earthquake engineering expert Peter Yanev, “In most of California, you might as well assume you are right on top of a fault whether or not it is listed on a map!”

Check out the image below.  293 earthquake centered mostly around one area near Hawthorne, Nevada.

And while the cluster of earthquakes shown on the USGS map above don’t appear to be too close to major metropolitan areas, recent history tells us that 200 miles isn’t too far for an earthquake wave to travel to cause significant damage.  The location of these quakes is about 130 miles south of Reno, and about the same distance away from Stockton and Fresno.

It may be nothing.  Then again…