Magnitude 6.5 Earthquake Strikes Off Northern California

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Magnitude 6.5 Earthquake Strikes Off Northern California

The US Geological Survey has reported a magnitude 6.5  earthquake off the coast of Northern California

The quake occurred in the Pacific Ocean about 100 miles off the coast of Eureka at around 6:50 a.m. on Thursday.

The epicentre was 165km west of Ferndale, California, at a shallow depth of 10km ((6.2 miles) below sea level.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage and no tsunami warning was issued.

Earlier reports from the USGS said the earthquake was a magnitude 6.8

Two quakes of more than 4.0-magnitude have shaken California in the last week.

California’s northern coast sits along the Mendocino Triple Junction, where the Pacific, North American and Juan de Fuca tectonic plates collide.

Seismologist Lucy Jones said the earthquake was on the Pacific-Gorda plate on the end of the San Andreas Fault.

In the US, the next ‘Big One,’ an earthquake of magnitude 7.0 or more, is generally expected along the San Andreas line.

Geologists agree that the fault has reached such a level of stress that a massive quake is only a matter of time. In June, large-scale motion was detected along the fault line, creating further panic in cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco.

But there is another danger which lies in the Bay Area, a hidden fault zone was discovered that upped the already huge earthquake risk in the San Francisco Bay Area.

In October, USGS geologists published their findings in the Science Advances journal, which suggest that if a quake on the connected Rodgers Creek and Hayward faults were to happen, the energy from the trembler could be five times greater than the devastating Loma Prieta quake of 1989.

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