1994 Northridge Earthquake Southern California A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck Northridge, California, on January 17, 1994, at approximately 4:31 a.m. There were thousands of injuries and at least 57 fatalities from the devastating Northridge earthquake. The Northridge earthquake was the most expensive in American history, as well as the most damaging to hit the state since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The economic damage was up to $20 billion in damage cost plus an additional $40 billion in economic loss. The community of Reseda, which is around 23 miles to the West-Northwest of downtown Los Angeles, served as its epicenter. The quake caused an effect known as directivity, in which the amplitude of seismic waves was greater in the…show more content… Direct observations at Oat Mountain indicate that the Santa Susana Mountains were forced up by at least 40 centimeters, and modeling slip on the fault plane suggests that they may have been pushed up by as much as 52 cm. Geological Characteristics Thousands of landslides occurred in the mountains surrounding the San Fernando Valley, as far north as Castaic Lake. The earthquake was primarily buried profoundly in a blind thrust fault underneath the San Fernando Valley. The fault plane broke apart at a depth of 18 kilometers above sea level and 5 kilometers below it. The strongest seismic energy was directed along the fault plane toward a low populated area of the Valley. Earthquakes originate from abrupt movement along internal faults. The action releases seismic waves, which travel through the Earth and cause the earth to tremble, as a result of stored "elastic strain" energy. The Northridge earthquake was so massive that it forced the ground surface higher, creating an asymmetric dome, and it was able to modify Earth's crust (around 4,000 square kilometers). The damage patterns of the earthquake were mostly identical to the San Fernando Earthquake that occurred in…show more content… The outermost blue dash-dotted circle depicts the location of the P wave at the warning time, implying that most people of the severely shook area would have been warned by the P wave before receiving a warning from the EEW (earthquake early warning) system. Aftershock: The National Guard was called upon to stop looting in blacked-out neighborhoods after communities’ lost electricity. Rescue operations were carried out to find survivors buried beneath the debris. The injured flooded into the hospital. Although the Northridge earthquake was not one where many lives were lost, it had a greater impact on people's lives than past natural catastrophes. Approximately 57 people were killed and almost 9,000 were injured, with an estimated 25,000 units lost or seriously damaged to the point where people could not live there. Many businesses were destroyed during the earthquake, leaving many without a job. An estimated 112,000 structures were damaged as well as over 93,000 buildings in a no-reuse state. Within the small enterprises, Administration conducted around 535,000 interviews and was able to obtain 100,000 loans for the
