The Ridgecrest Earthquakes of 2019
Near Ridgecrest, California
On the Fourth of July, twenty nineteen, at half past ten in the morning, the ground beneath this valley heaved with a magnitude six point four earthquake. It was jarring, but it turned out to be only a warning. About thirty four hours later, on the evening of July fifth, a magnitude seven point one mainshock struck, the largest earthquake in Southern California in twenty years.
The epicenter lay just northeast of Ridgecrest, near Searles Valley. Remarkably, no one was killed directly by the shaking in California. The sequence's single death came far away, across the state line in Pahrump, Nevada, where a man died when a vehicle he was working under fell from its jack stands.
About twenty five people were injured. The naval base at China Lake was hit so hard it was declared not mission capable, and repair estimates climbed into the billions of dollars. In Trona, dozens of homes were knocked from their foundations.
The quakes even set the great Garlock Fault creeping for the first time on record. Tens of thousands of aftershocks rolled through the desert in the months that followed.
