Earthquake Expert Says Quake Activity Building Up

More than 1,100 people have died because of a massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake that shook Indonesia 24 hours ago. On Tuesday, a giant earthquake near the American Samoan Islands caused death and destruction and the western United States has seen two sizable earthquakes since 10:30 a.m. Wednesday.

On Thursday earthquakes have shaken parts of California and Nevada. The biggest quake was just 140 miles west of Las Vegas in Keeler, California it certainly has experts on earthquakes in Las Vegas taking notice.

There are several major faults running through Southern Nevada including one less than a mile from the Las Vegas Strip.

Those have earthquake expert Burt Slemmons watching closely. “It could be building up here and in California,” he said. Slemmons has been chasing fault lines for 55 years. He is a retired professor from UNR.

Slemmons helped route and design the Alaskan pipeline so it could survive a magnitude seven earthquake. He says Las Vegas could have one anytime and he predicts it will be a 6.0 or larger.

“I have earthquake tape and putty under potentially toppling articles. I have anchored my bookcases which is one of the major kinds of damage.”

via Earthquake Expert Says Quake Activity Building Up – Las Vegas Now.

More Earthquake Faults Under Salton Sea, Tremors San Andreas

Sound waves bounced off the lake bed reveal the shifting blocks of crust, leading to a new theory of how the ground is sinking and stretching near the infamous San Andreas fault.

By bouncing sound waves off the floor of the Salton Sea, researchers have discovered more than a dozen previously unknown earthquake faults, leading to a new theory of how the ground is sinking and stretching near the infamous San Andreas fault.

Danny Brothers, lead author of a study published Sunday, said the new understanding of the area’s seismic mechanics does not appear to suggest that a massive quake on the San Andreas is more imminent than previously believed. Earthquake scientists have been interested in the region, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles, because the southernmost end of the San Andreas disappears at the banks of the Salton Sea.

Salton Sea is swarming with earthquake data

“By all reports, the San Andreas is considered overdue,” Brothers, a geophysics graduate student at UC San Diego, said Monday. “What this does is gives us more information to assess it. Now we can start to run some scenarios on how earthquakes beneath the Salton Sea might affect the state of stress on the San Andreas and vice versa.”

Scientists have not had very detailed maps of the crust under the Salton Sea, in part because underwater conditions have made it difficult to employ traditional techniques for studying faults. For years, scientists inferred fault locations there by studying earthquake data. The recordings led scientists to suggest that blocks of crust were swiveling side to side, but generally moving horizontally.

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Tremors near San Andreas earthquake fault signal increased stress

Scientists have detected an increase in mysterious underground tremors along a stretch of the San Andreas fault, signaling stress that could boost the likelihood of a major earthquake.

Seismic tools buried in deep holes near the town of Parkfield, 175 miles south of San Jose, have found that the number of tremors along the fault has increased up to 80 percent over four years, according to University of California-Berkeley seismologist Robert Nadeau and graduate student Aurélie Guilhem.

The study, published in Friday’s issue of the journal Science, offers no precise forecast of a rupture along this restless region. But it may bring scientists one step closer toward the long-sought goal of predicting potentially devastating quakes. The same pressure that stimulates tremors may also stimulate quakes.

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William Branham saw this over 40 years Ago

From his sermon Choosing of A Bride in 1965:

That’s solemn warning. We don’t know what time. And you don’t know what time that this city one day is going to be laying out here in the bottom of this ocean.

“O, Capernaum,” said Jesus, “thou who exalted into heaven will be brought down into hell, for if the mighty works had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, it’d have been standing till this day.” And Sodom and Gomorrah lays at the bottom of the Dead Sea, and Capernaum’s in the bottom of the sea. Thou city, who claims to be the city of the Angels, who’s exalted yourself into heaven and sent all the dirty filthy things of fashions and things, till even the foreign countries come here to pick up our filth and send it away, with your fine churches and steeples, and so forth the way you do; remember, one day you’ll be laying in the bottom of this sea. You’re great honeycomb under you right now.

The wrath of God is belching right beneath you. How much longer He’ll hold this sandbar hanging over that, when that ocean out yonder a mile deep will slide in there plumb back to the Salton Sea. It’ll be worse than the last day of Pompeii. Repent, Los Angeles. Repent the rest of you and turn to God. The hour of His wrath is upon the earth. Flee while there’s time to flee and come into Christ.” Let us pray.

Oregon – Big Earthquake Coming Sooner

The good news: New research is giving scientists a better handle on when the big one might strike the Pacific Coast.

The bad news: It probably will be sooner than we thought.

“The amount of devastation is going to be unbelievable,” says Rob Witter, coastal geologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. “People aren’t going to be ready for this. Even if they are prepared, they are going to be surprised by the level of devastation.”

Witter spoke last week about the latest in earthquake and tsunami studies — it’s Earthquake and Tsunami Awareness Month — as part of state and local efforts to educate the public on preparing for a megaquake of magnitude 9 or more. Witter and James Roddey, spokesman for the state agency, also will give a public talk Tuesday in Newport.

Witter says scientists are now in wide agreement that there’s a 10 to 14 percent chance a powerful earthquake and tsunami will strike the Oregon coast in the next 50 years.

Why do they think that? The latest findings come from Chris Goldfinger, director of the Active Tectonics and Seafloor Mapping Lab at Oregon State University, Roddey says. But to understand Goldfinger’s work, Roddey goes back to what he calls “one of the great scientific detective stories of the 20th century.”

Twenty-five years ago, scientists didn’t think the Cascadia subduction zone — a place 50 to 75 miles off Oregon where two of the Earth’s plates meet, one sliding under the other — could produce earthquakes.

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LA Beach Signs Warn of Tsunami Threat

Like many Californians who put down roots in earthquake country, Robin Rudisill knows the “Big One” could strike without warning. Yet from her Venice beachfront duplex, Rudisill worries about a different massive blow from Mother Nature — a tsunami.

Her 1950s-era home — with its cool ocean breeze and golden sunsets — sits smack in the heart of a potentially deadly tsunami zone. If that big one ever came ashore, scientists say, it could raze the landscape from the sun-kissed beach to about a mile inland.

To alert homeowners and beachgoers that they are in tsunami territory, the city of Los Angeles has begun posting blue and white “TSUNAMI HAZARD ZONE” signs with an image of ominous-looking waves. The signs, which have surfaced in beach parking lots and at major intersections in Venice and other low-lying communities, also point out evacuation routes.

“It makes it clear that we are in an inundation zone, which most people did not previously, and many still do not, know,” said Rudisill, who pushed for the signs.

While a tsunami threat to the Golden State is real, the potential for killer waves is far less likely than the earthquakes, wildfires, landslides and floods that plague the nation’s most populous state.

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San Andreas Quake Swarms Watched By Scientists

In Southern California, scientists have their eye on a swarm of quakes in the desert. More than 450 quakes have hit near the Salton Sea since March 21.

The southern end of the San Andreas Fault hasn’t snapped in more than 300 years. But scientists worry small quakes could act as a trigger for the big one.

“It’s very close to the locked section of the San Andreas Fault. Anything seismically that happens there definitely gets our attention,” said Cal Tech Seismologist Kate Hutton.

Scientists are installing 22 motion sensors on the 800 mile fault line that slices California from San Francisco to the Salton Sea.

A temblor in the southern end of the fault could hit San Diego County within a minute of rupture.

Experts say everyone should have earthquake preparedness kits ready with plenty of food and water stocked up.

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Salton Sea Is Swarming With Earthquake Data

It’s one of the great mysteries of Southern California seismology: Every couple of years, the remote desert area around the Salton Sea is shaken by swarms of small to moderate earthquakes that often last several days.

The swarms returned this week, with the area recording more than 200 temblors since Saturday — including several that were felt Wednesday. But this time, scientists had sophisticated instruments in the ground to record the activity, helping them to better understand the swarms and how they can affect seismic risk elsewhere.

Scientists have noticed that the quakes appear to have a pattern, moving southeast as the days progress. But a bigger question remains: Can the quakes trigger larger — and potentially more destructive — quakes along the San Andreas fault, which terminates at the shore of the Salton Sea?

A creep meter on the San Andreas just north of the Salton Sea area, operated by the University of Colorado, found a 0.002-inch slip on the fault right after the largest earthquake in the swarm — a magnitude 4.8 on Tuesday.

Experts say that’s a tiny slip for a fault so large, but the novelty of having that kind of data is tantalizing for scientists.

“If you look at the statistics, they say the odds of something bigger happening is on the order of 1%,” said Susan Hough of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena. “It raises your blood pressure as a seismologist, but we’re trying to read the tea leaves.”

Seismologists have long suspected that quakes in the Salton Sea area can trigger movement on other nearby faults, including the San Andreas. The strongest evidence of this occurred in 1987, when a magnitude 6.2 earthquake near the Salton Sea triggered a magnitude 6.6 quake 12 hours later on the Superstition Hills fault to the south.

Experts are still trying to figure out why the hard-scrabble landscape of desert expanse and small struggling towns around the sea is so seismically active.

The sea sits atop a very thin crust that is being constantly stretched as the North American and Pacific plates grind against each other. The area is also veined by dozens of fault lines that run parallel to and criss-cross one another.

The area experienced regular quake swarms until 1979, when a large temblor just south of the U.S.-Mexico border seemed to curb activity, said Doug Given, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist.

But this quiet period appears to have ended.

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Southern California Quake Swarm: A Precursor to the Big One?

There has been a swarm of earthquakes in one area of Southern California that scientists in Pasadena are watching closely, with more than 20 temblors hitting this morning.

The biggest of the 24 quakes recorded this morning was a magnitude-4.8 which struck at 4:55 a.m. near the Salton Sea in Imperial County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake was centered three miles south of the small town of Bombay Beach and 90 miles east of San Diego.

It was followed by a swarm of smaller quakes, which were recorded between 4:58 a.m. and 6:14 a.m. around Bombay Beach. Most of those temblors registered lower than a 3.0-magnitude, officials said.

There were no immediate reports of any injury or damages.

Scores of small quakes have shaken the area in recent days.

The activity has sparked the interest of scientists who want to see if small faults crossing under the Salton Sea are transferring energy to a section of the more dangerous San Andreas fault, which has not popped in more than 300 years.

An earthquake that starts in Bombay Beach and ripples northwest along the San Andreas fault could be the Big One that devastates Los Angeles, Graham Kent, a research geophysicist at UC San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times.

The activity is being monitored by a system run the U.S. Geological Survey and Caltech in Pasadena.

In a 48-hour period starting Saturday morning, 42 quakes shook just south of Bombay Beach on the Salton Sea, ranging in magnitude from 0.5 to 3.3.

via Quake Swarm: A Precursor to the Big One?.

Study Finds Troubling Pattern of Southern California Earthquakes

Large earthquakes have rumbled along a southern section of the San Andreas fault more frequently than previously believed, suggesting that Southern California could be overdue for a strong temblor on the notorious fault line, a new study has found.

The Carrizo Plain section of the San Andreas has not seen a massive quake since the much-researched Fort Tejon temblor of 1857, which at an estimated magnitude of 7.9 is considered the most powerful earthquake to hit Southern California in modern times.

But the new research by UC Irvine scientists, to be published next week, found that major quakes occurred there roughly every 137 years over the last 700 years. Until now, scientists believed big quakes occurred along the fault roughly every 200 years.

The findings are significant because seismologists have long believed this portion of the fault is capable of sparking the so-called Big One that officials have for decades warned will eventually occur in Southern California.

“It’s been long enough since 1857 that we should be concerned about another great earthquake that ruptures through this part of the fault,” said Ken Hudnut, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena who was not involved in the study.

Many scientists thought the Carrizo area produced relatively infrequent but large-scale earthquakes such as the Fort Tejon temblor. The new work suggests the area produces more quakes but also ones of a smaller magnitude than Fort Tejon, said Ray Weldon, a University of Oregon geologist who was not involved in the research but reviewed the paper for the Journal of Geophysical Research.

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Disaster Prediction: Tsunami Just the Beginning of Earthquake Supercycle, Say Scientists

Massive earthquakes in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra are just the beginning. Researchers expect a 30-year cycle of mega-quakes like the one that caused the 2004 tsunami.

How can researchers predict earthquakes? By studying coral reefs in the region. Not only are coral reefs many centuries old, but their shape is a direct response to water levels. After a series of earthquakes, usually the reef winds up higher or lower than it was before – and any part of it that’s exposed to air dies.

Scientists studying Sumatran reefs say the coral there have experienced massive die-offs as well as new horizontal growth about every two hundred years. Moreover, these changes happened in fits and starts over phases of about 30 – 100 years. That suggests the area experiences what’s called an “earthquake supercycle” for several decades every two centuries.

Last year’s 8.4 quake off the coast of Sumatra is probably the first quake in a new supercycle, since the last big die-off in the coral reefs took place in 1833. Other quake cycles hit in 1374, 1596, 1675, and 1797.

Geophysicist Yehuda Bock co-authored a study published in Nature last week that asserted the recent Sumatra quakes were just the beginning. According to Science News:

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Arkansas – Series of Quakes Could Be Sign of Larger Earthquake Coming

A series of small earthquakes that rattled central Arkansas in recent weeks could be a sign of something much bigger to come.

By this weekend, seismologists hope to install three measurement devices to gather data about future temblors in the area. That information could show whether the rumbles come from heat-related geological changes or from an undiscovered fault — which could mean a risk of substantial earthquakes in the future.

“The potential for generating a high-magnitude earthquake is real,” said Haydar Al-Shukri, director of the Arkansas Earthquake Center at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Five earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 2.2 to 2.7 have hit central Arkansas this month. Quakes with a magnitude of 2.5 to 3 are typically the smallest felt by people.

While hundreds of earthquakes occur each year, including several in Arkansas, the location of the recent ones give Al-Shukri pause. Arkansas quakes generally occur in the state’s northeast corner, part of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, where three temblors with magnitudes of around 8 struck during the winter of 1812 and smaller ones continue today.

But central Arkansas does not have any seismic history, Al-Shukri said.

“It is abnormal. It is significant,” he said. “We need to carefully watch this activity.”

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