Earthquake potential under Ports of LB and LA higher than previously believed: Recent study suggests

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Source: Signal Tribune

Earthquake potential under Ports of LB and LA higher than previously believed: Recent study suggests Wilmington Fault could actively generate large quake.

Anita W. Harris, Staff Writer|September 4, 2019

The Southern California temblors a couple of months ago may have us on slightly higher alert. But a new study suggests we might need to be even more prepared for a Long Beach-area earthquake.

Franklin Wolfe, a researcher at Harvard University’s Earth and Planetary Sciences department, led a study on the Wilmington Fault, a seismic fault line that cuts through the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Using 2D and 3D seismic-reflection surveying and petroleum, water-well and groundwater-aquifer data, the researchers concluded that the “blind-thrust” fault is active rather than dormant as previously believed.

Furthermore, the fault’s size suggests it can generate 6.3- to 6.4-magnitude earthquakes and that linking to nearby faults of Huntington Beach, Torrance and Compton can potentially result in earthquakes greater than 7.4 in magnitude on the Richter scale.

“We define the Wilmington blind?thrust as a tectonically active fault capable of generating large, damaging earthquakes,” the researchers assert. “These earthquakes would directly impact the overlying Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, as well as the broader Los Angeles metropolitan area.”

Published last month in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, the study recommends that the Wilmington Fault should be included in local assessments of earthquake hazards.

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Related: The Wilmington Blind‐Thrust Fault: An Active Concealed Earthquake Source beneath Los Angeles, California (Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America)