Biggest California earthquake in two decades ruptured on at least 24 faults
in California in the last 20 years. In that same event, at least 20 smaller faults that intersected the main faults also ruptured, according to the study, making the zone of land atop moving faults wider than might be expected.“The geometry of this fault network is just incredibly complicated,” Ross said. “These faults are unmapped ... many of them are at right angles to each other; they’re cross-cutting each other.
A modest fault that begins to move in a quake can make it easier for a neighboring fault to rupture, Hauksson said. In Ridgecrest, the Fourth of July earthquakes probably kept on hammering strong spots along seismically strained faults until the larger magnitude 7.1 ruptured on July 5, Hauksson said.
If supersized earthquakes are more likely, that means there would be fewer damaging temblors over any given time period. “You won’t need to have another earthquake for a much longer time,” Jones said. In New Zealand, scientists were stunned at the bizarre map of the faults ruptured in the magnitude 7.8A map showing where faults ruptured at the surface from the magnitude 7.8 Kaikoura earthquake in New Zealand in 2016.
Further analysis needs to be done to determine whether the 20 cross faults identified in the Ridgecrest study using computer analysis of shaking records actually broke the ground at the surface, according to Tim Dawson, a senior engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey.
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