LOS ANGELES, CA – A magnitude-4.6 earthquake rattled Southern California on Friday afternoon, with tremors felt from the coast to inland areas. The quake, which struck about 7 miles northwest of Malibu in the Santa Monica Mountains, was followed by more than a dozen aftershocks, the largest reaching magnitudes of 3.0 and 2.7 within an hour in the same area.
Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones noted that the aftershock sequence was “very robust,” but mentioned that the possibility of the quake being a foreshock to a larger seismic event decreases over time.
Reports of shaking came from as many as 12 million people throughout the greater Los Angeles area, spanning from the LA, Orange, and Ventura county coasts to inland areas like the San Fernando Valley, downtown LA, Riverside, Irvine, and Anaheim. Some weak to light shaking was also felt in parts of north San Diego County.
Marla Dailey, who was at work in a dental office in Thousand Oaks, described the quake as a “major jolt” but assured that the patients were unharmed and continued with their appointments.
Although there were no immediate reports of significant damage, the Los Angeles Fire Department conducted a damage survey. The U.S. National Tsunami Warning Center also reported that no tsunami was triggered by the earthquake.
Dr. Lucy Jones explained that the quake possibly occurred on the Malibu Coast Fault, located near the communities of Pacific Palisades, Westwood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. On the same date in 1971, the San Fernando earthquake, which registered at a deadly magnitude-6.5, caused widespread devastation and fatalities in the region.
This earthquake also coincided with a magnitude-5.7 earthquake on Hawaii’s Big Island, which caused shaking on Oahu, including in Honolulu, but was unrelated to the seismic activity in Southern California.