An earthquake that measured 6.0 struck about 750 miles off California’s coast, in the Pacific Ocean Ring of Fire. A tsunami warning was not issued.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) states that the massive earthquake struck the North Pacific Ocean on Tuesday evening, just before 10 pm, which was barely a week after another quake with a 5.1 magnitude hit San Francisco.
The earthquake, which took place in the deep sea, was only felt by 92 people between Santa Rosa and San Francisco, as stated on the USGS website. The earthquake is the largest to have hit the area since 2014, when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck Napa, causing a lot of damage to buildings and leaving more than 100 people injured.
This year’s 6.0 earthquake struck about six miles deep, roughly 737 and 750 miles from Big Sur and San Francisco, respectively.
The Bay Area’s National Weather Service said that they considered the latest earthquake too small, adding that it had happened too far away from the coast for them to issue a tsunami warning. They also decided not to issue a tsunami warning to Hawaii.
The decision not to issue a tsunami warning was also supported by sea level data collected by the Deep-Ocean Assessment and Report of Tsunamis, otherwise known as DART, which showed that the earthquake did not make the water column get a vertical uplift.
The earthquake occurred in the Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped belt about 25,000 miles long and 310 miles wide. This area has frequent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes because it has nearly 900 volcanoes, and more than 300 of them are active.
The 5.1 magnitude earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area last week was felt widely, as residents from Fairfield, Stockton, and Salinas reported that they had felt the earthquake rattling buildings and windows at around 11 am on October 25. Its epicenter was on the Calaveras Fault line in San Jose. The USGS reported that it only had a depth of 4.2 miles, which made it a shallow earthquake.
An aftershock quake with a 3.1 magnitude followed the earthquake, but the National Weather Service assured people they did not expect a tsunami to stem from the quake.
San Jose and Santa Cruz officials have not yet received any reports of injuries or property damages resulting from the earthquake.
Reports from several California residents said that the Shake Alert System warned them about the earthquake about 5 to 10 seconds earlier and allowed them to prepare before it hit.
The Alert System’s warning resulted in the evacuation of several buildings across San Francisco as residents feared the quake would be massive and damaging.
It is well known that California is prone to getting earthquakes, and the Earthquake Information Center reports that California experiences about three earthquakes annually.