1,675 More Loans Are Announced for Quake Victims

As $40 million in new federal housing loans were announced Sunday to aid Northridge earthquake victims, scientists reported that Southern California is in a period of “low seismicity.”

The announcement of funds for 1,675 more loans to facilitate quake recovery in single family and multifamily homes came in a Los Angeles news conference by U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and Mayor Richard J. Riordan.

Cisneros’ announcement at the Olympic Auditorium brings to 12,275 the number of low-interest, long-term loans approved thus far for dwellings damaged in the Northridge quake.

Riordan said there are now only 350 more units qualified for loans that have yet to be funded.

Meanwhile, Caltech and U.S. Geological Survey scientists, in a new report, said “low seismicity continues” in the Southland, with 3,966 earthquakes in the area from the Mexican border north to the San Joaquin Valley in the second quarter of the year.

That number may seem high, but most of the quakes were too small to be felt and the total number was the smallest in any quarter for the past year.

The decline of quakes is due in large part to an ever smaller number of aftershocks from the 1992 Landers earthquake, the 1994 Northridge quake and the 1995 Ridgecrest quakes, according to the report by Kate Hutton of Caltech and Lucy Jones of the Geological Survey.

Even so, the total number of aftershocks has been staggering in the last several years, the report shows, with more to come.

The scientists said that between Jan. 17, 1994, the date of the 6.7 Northridge quake, and June 30, 1996, there were 13,138 Northridge aftershocks. These included 10 in the magnitude 5 range, 50 in the magnitude 4 range and 389 in the magnitude 3 range.

In the second quarter of 1996, there were 310 Northridge aftershocks.

“Knowing what we have observed about the rate and decay of the aftershocks,” Hutton and Jones said, six more Northridge aftershocks between magnitude 3.0 and 3.9 can be expected in the next year and possibly one of magnitude 4.0 or above.

However, they added, “the probability of a magnitude 5.0 or greater aftershock to Northridge in the next 12 months is only one in eight.”

As for the June 28, 1992, Landers earthquake, now assessed at magnitude 7.3, the two scientists said there were 63,336 aftershocks through June 30 of this year, including 944 in the second quarter.

Of the Landers aftershocks, 22 have been magnitude 5.0 or stronger, 166 in the magnitude 4 range and 1,592 in the magnitude 3 range.

“In the Landers sequence, the next 12 months should produce 21 aftershocks between magnitude 3.0 and 3.9 . . . two aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or greater . . . and the probability of another magnitude 5.0 aftershock in the next year is about one in four,” Hutton and Jones said.

The 3,966 earthquakes in Southern California in the second quarter of 1996 contrasts with 25,849 in the third quarter of 1992, just after the Landers earthquake. That was the largest number in any quarter since quarterly records first were compiled in 1986.