United States

southwest of Searles Valley, eastern California

Local

7.1 M_w

IX MSK

On the 4th of July 2019, the 2019 Ridgecrest earthquake sequence was triggered southwest of Searles Valley in eastern California, approximately 150 km northeast of the San Andreas Fault (i.e., the major plate boundary in the region). This was a sequence of earthquake events that was marked by two major ground shakings and hundreds of aftershocks along two orthogonal seismic faults. The first strong seismic event occurred on 04/07/2019 (at 10:34 local time) with a 6.4 Mw moment magnitude, which was followed by the 7.1 Mw powerful shaking after about 34 hours (on 05/07/2019 at 20:19 local time). The intensity of those seismic events was estimated to be VIII (i.e., severe shaking, moderate/heavy damage) and IX (i.e., violent shaking, heavy damage) , respectively, in the Modified Mercalli Intensity scale. Both epicentres were located within the NAWS area.
This was the largest earthquake in the state since 1999.