California State Geologist Comments On California Quake And Plate Movement

 Mount Lassen

California State geologist John Parrish has looked closely at the earthquake that was felt over a wide area of California yesterday.

“It was a moderately strong earthquake, a 5.7, so there was some energy behind it,” California State Geologist John Parrish said. “And one reason we felt it here is that those earthquake waves get into the Sacramento Valley, which is a lot of soft sediment that tends to magnify the earthquake waves.

“Those waves travel in the basin, and then they can’t get out. They echo back and forth underground.”

…..

“As California tends to be moving southward relative to the Pacific plate moving northward, this rubbing against each other creates stress in the ground, and every once in a while, those stresses are relieved along a crack, which is a fault,” Parrish said.

(Source)

The epicenter of the quake was some 30 miles from Mount Lassen, which is considered to be an active volcano.

Pacific Gas and Electric said that some 660 customers lost power in the Lake Almanor area and some homes sustained minor damage such as cracked plaster and collapsed chimneys. Fractured water pipes has left people with a boil water advisory until at least Monday.

California sits between the San Andreas Fault and the Cascadia Fault line with many more minor faults snaking off across the area. We know from past experience that an uptick in the size of earthquakes can be a precursor of bigger things to come. Japan had days of earthquakes averaging 5 magnitude before the 9  that caused not only damage in its own right but due to the tsunami it caused.

Similarly the Indonesian quake was preceded by days of smaller quakes before the big one hit killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Geologists hope that the continual release of small amounts of stress along the faults will prevent a major build up of pressure that results in longer lengths of the fault slipping, causing a much larger earthquake.

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