State of emergency declared in California, residents should be wary of new tremors

Monday, July 8, 2019

A state of emergency was declared by the governor of California, Gavin Newsom warned residents should to be wary of new tremors as the southern part of the state was hit by a second significant earthquake.

The largest earthquake in the region seen in nearly 20 years was felt from Sacramneto to Mexico and crews in California continued to assess damage to cracked and burned buildings, broken roads, leaking water and gas lines and other infrastructure on Saturday.
The governor mentioned in twitter that he was grateful for everyone who worked tirelessly on the recovery effort through night and this morning. As Californians they always have to be prepared for the next earthquake.
A presidential emergency declaration was also requested from Newsom that would unlock the federal funds to support the communities affected.
Newsom also said that the quakes were ‘wake-up call’ for the state and other parts of the US.

After the magnitude 7.1 tremor hit as darkness fell on Friday after being jolted by a 6.4 quake 34 hours earlier, the Residents of Ridgecrest, a city of about 27,000 150 miles north-east of Los Angeles woke to new damage.
David Witt, Kern county’s fire chief said that so far there were no known fatalities but the damage was not fully assessed.
Nobody was trapped, there were no major collapses that they were aware, officials were inspecting buildings and the US army corps of engineers inspected a nearby dam.
China Lake, located north-west of Ridgecrest, US Naval air weapons station was evacuated of all nonessential personnel.
Reuters mentioned that the facility which was more than 1.1m acres is larger than the state of Rhode Island.
As per expert southern California can get more significant shakes in the days ahead.
According to Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at the US geological Survey, within the next week there was about one in 10 chance that another 7.0 quake could hit while chances of a 5.0 –magnitude quake is approaching certainty.
About 25 miles of fault lien the new quake probably ruptured and was a part of the continuing sequence.
The fault that caused the quake appears to be growing , this happened at the end of the zone that moved previously and the fault was now 25 to 30 miles long and ‘growing’.

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