Tuesday, March 20, 2012

New Madrid/Northridge Earthquakes

These maps shows some of the effects of both the New Madrid earthquake and the Northridge earthquake.

The Northridge earthquake was an earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, in Reseda, a neighborhood in Los Angeles, California. The earthquake had a "strong" moment magnitude of 6.7, but the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever instrumentally recorded in an urban area in North America,with strong ground motion felt as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada, over 270 miles from the epicenter. The death toll came to a total of 57 people, and there were over 8,700 injured. In addition, the earthquake caused an estimated $20 billion in damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.



The 1811–1812 New Madrid earthquakes were an intense intraplate earthquake series beginning with an initial pair of very large earthquakes on December 16, 1811. These earthquakes remain the most powerful earthquakes to hit the eastern United States in recorded history. These events, as well as the seismic zone of their occurrence, were named for the Mississippi River town of New Madrid, then part of the Louisiana Territory, now within Missouri.