Magnitude 5.1 Earthquake Rattles San Francisco

A magnitude 5.1 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area on Tuesday, rocking structures and marking the region’s largest quake in eight years. There were no reports of deaths or injuries from the earthquake.

The quake happened at 11:42 a.m. local time, roughly 12 miles east of San Jose, California, at a depth of about 4 miles, according to the US Geological Survey. The neighbourhood is approximately 40 miles southeast of downtown San Francisco.

According to seismologist Lucy Jones, the earthquake was the largest in the Bay Area. The most recent major quake was a 6.0 magnitude earthquake near Napa in 2014.

Jones informed KTVU-Fox that the earthquake occurred on the Calaveras fault, one of the Bay Area’s eight major faults.

“The Calaveras quake fault is prone to minor quakes,” Jones explained.

The National Weather Service’s Bay Area office reported shaking at its Monterey office. According to tweets from the agencies, BART and Caltrain train briefly halted service before resuming at reduced speeds.

According to Santa Cruz County, there have been no significant reports of damage due to the quake. According to the county, there wasn’t any damage to schools, and classes could resume safely.

According to California’s Emergency Services, or Cal OES, nearly 100,000 people reported receiving a quake early warning before the shaking began.

The agency stated that “advance notice ranged from two seconds for those relatively close to the epicentre to 18 seconds for those in San Francisco.”

Rich Constantine, mayor of Morgan Hill, a city near San Jose, California, said he was in his kitchen at the time of the “long and steady” quake.

The earthquake on Tuesday happened just one week after the anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. A magnitude 6.9 quake rocked Santa Cruz, California, in 1989, just as the World Series began in San Francisco.

1989 Loma Prieta earthquake

The Loma Prieta quake struck San Francisco on October 17, 1989. The earthquake’s epicentre was near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The magnitude 6.9 quake was the strongest the state had felt in several years.

The huge San Andreas Fault, where the massive Pacific plate moves northwestward, generated the Loma Prieta earthquake. The epicentre shifted up to two meters during the quake.

The Loma Prieta quake claimed 63 lives, injured 3,757 people, and cost $6 billion in damage.

Segments of key transit arteries, including the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and a busy motorway, collapsed, and many people were killed.

US Today, VOR News