Earthquake San Francisco

Earthquake San Francisco :  Earthquake Bay area

A jolt-and-roll felt around the Bay Area Friday afternoon. scientists say the 4.1 magnitude quake, followed by several smaller ones, was routine in an area notorious for seismic restlessness.

The earthquake struck 13 miles southeast of San Jose's City Hall at 4:10 p.m. on Friday, in a locked-up patch of rocks deep underground near the Calaveras Fault in a remote oak-studded landscape.

The precise location was identified as 11 miles southeast of Alum Rock and 10 miles north of Mount Hamilton. The jolt was  felt as far away as Santa Cruz and Martinez. Around the South Bay and elsewhere, the earthquake jolted more than few although no one reported any damage.

Though residents in Milpitas and San Jose felt the jolt, police didn't receive an influx of calls. "I was kind of surprised, that no one called. I felt it a little rocking," said Belen Anaya, dispatcher at Milpitas Police.

 
It is  the latest in a series of occasional jolts triggered by the restless fault, which routinely releases stress caused by the earth's shifting continental plates.

Its epicenter was only 1.5 miles from the center of the infamous 1984 temblor in Morgan Hill, which caused damage that totaled more than $10 million. But U.S. Geological Survey scientists do not think it is a precursor to that large quake. They predict a recurrence at that site in another 30 years.

This region, near the intersection with the Hayward fault, is a place of ongoing and often imperceptible earth creeping, as evidenced by routinely broken sidewalks in Hayward and Fremont. But sometimes small sections of rocks -- about four football fields in size -- get stuck, and then trigger an earthquake when they suddenly give way.




Earthquake San Francisco :  Earthquake Bay area