California earthquake today: Was Ridgecrest CA quake on San Andreas fault line?

The 6.4 magnitude quake struck at 6.33pm BST (10.33am local time) in the Mojave Desert about 150 miles north east of Los Angeles in the USA. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said it was located about 11 miles northeast of the city of Ridgecrest, home to about 28,000 people. Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said firefighters responded to five fires, while broken gas lines were being attended to by utility workers. There are no known casualties at this moment in time.

Videos posted online showed smashed bottles in the aisles in one liquor store, showing the scale of the damage caused.

Was Ridgecrest CA quake on San Andreas fault line?

USGS seismologist Lucy Jones said there were at least two seismic faults involved – but San Andreas was not one of them.

The author of The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us tweeted the Southern Californian earthquake hit on a “strikeslip fault”.

She added: “It is an area with a lot of little faults but no long fault.”

San Andreas is the tectonic boundary between the North American Plate and Pacific Plate and sits on the Ring of Fire.

The line extends through the state of California from Cape Mendocino down to the Mexican border.

Its notable earthquakes included the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that killed more than 3,000 people.

Seismologists say the line is long overdue a massive earthquake, which has been labelled as the “Big One”.

Dr Jones tweeted the numerical possibility of an earthquake of this magnitude occurring in a post she wrote on July 3.

The scientist said: “If the daily probability of the Big One was 50/50, then the chance it would happen in the next week would be greater than 99 percent.

“Real probability is about two percent per year, or 1/20,000 each day.”

The expert said today’s earthquake was the strongest one to hit southern California since a 7.1 quake struck in the area on October 16, 1999.

A 4.2 tremor which hit about 30 minutes beforehand preceded the larger quake.

Emergency authorities urged people not to call 911 unless people were injured.

Many people across the state and the United States were out celebrating Independence Day.

source: express.co.uk