Magnitude 3.2 earthquake strikes along prominent SoCal urban fault line
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- A magnitude 3.2 earthquake jolted the Compton area just after midnight Sunday, sending light shaking across southern Los Angeles.
- The quake’s epicenter sits on the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone, a major urban fault that produced the deadly 1933 Long Beach earthquake, which killed 120 people.
A magnitude 3.2 earthquake struck near the city of Compton early Sunday morning, delivering light shaking to the southern Los Angeles area.
The temblor jolted the area at 12:13 a.m., with an epicenter about three miles south-southeast of Compton. People reported feeling shaking as far away as Santa Clarita, according to the United States Geological Survey. No damage or accidents were reported.
It occurred about eight miles beneath the Earth’s surface.
Labor Day weekend in Los Angeles turned soggy with rare September rain and coastal flooding from Hurricane Marie. Angelenos brace for a midweek heat wave.
The epicenter near Compton sits directly over the Newport-Inglewood Fault Zone, one of Southern California’s most prominent urban fault lines, running from Culver City southeast through Compton, Long Beach and south into Orange County.
The devastating Long Beach earthquake of 1933, magnitude 6.4, occurred along this fault line, tearing through a 15-mile corridor that included Long Beach and Compton.
That earthquake caused 120 deaths.
The fault line is one of Southern California’s top seismic danger zones because it runs under dense and crowded areas.
Nearly 1,100 people reported feeling Sunday’s quake, according to the USGS.
Light shaking, generally noticeable indoors by many and strong enough to rattle dishes and windows, was felt in Oakland and nearby San Leandro and Alameda.
A 2017 study found that earthquakes on the fault centuries ago were so powerful that they caused a portion of Seal Beach near the Orange County coast to fall more than a foot in a matter of seconds.
The Compton area experienced two earthquakes in a matter of three days in 2019. One was a magnitude 3.5, the other a magnitude 2.6.
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