4.8 Magnitude Earthquake Strikes Baja California, Miles From Border

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border in Baja California, Mexico, and it was felt in San Diego and other parts of Southern California.

Fox5 in Southern California reported that a number of people in San Diego, located 180 miles to the west-northwest of the epicenter, felt the quake.

The tremor was located near Alberto Oviedo Mota at 12:18 p.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said on Nov. 19. Alberto Oviedo Mota is located about 35 miles from the border near Mexicali, Mexico.

A 3.3 aftershock in the same area was felt just minutes later, 10News reported.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

A 4.8 magnitude earthquake struck near the U.S.-Mexico border in Baja California, Mexico, and it was felt in San Diego. USGS

Earthquake-Prone

Baja California, a peninsula in Mexico, is very prone to earthquakes. In 2010, a 7.2 magnitude quake known as the 2010 Baja California earthquake or the 2010 Easter earthquake struck near the same place as the Nov. 19 quake. The tremor lasted for more than a minute and was felt throughout the West Coast and in some southern states.

Researchers in 2010 said at the time that the large quake could disturb nearby faults.

“Any quake of this size seems to pass some kind of threshold where it’s large enough to disturb or trigger other faults,” said Pat Abbott, a professor emeritus of geology at San Diego State University, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“In cases like this, that often means increasing stress on other faults, which makes them more prone to movement. The energy seems to be moving northward toward the San Andreas Fault. I don’t want to anthropomorphize, but it’s like this quake was goading the San Andreas.”

The 7.2 quake was preceded by a handful of smaller quakes known as foreshocks.

“Earthquakes don’t pay attention to international borders, which complicates our work,” USGS scientist Nancy King told the paper. “Most of the seismic activity appears to be originating south of the border, which means it’s harder to get good quake locations quickly. People are going to have to study the data. There will be field trips to the area, though that will probably take a day or two to coordinate.”

Abbot noted the quake was the same size as the devastating January 2010 Haiti earthquake that left between 100,000 and 160,000 people dead. The country is still recovering from the event years later.

“The big quake was double the size of the Haiti quake, but it doesn’t seem like there was a lot of damage caused, particularly in Mexico,” he said at the time. “That suggests that people are building better, or at least that past quakes have already knocked down the bad stuff.”

Meanwhile, Baja California and the rest of the West Coast are located on the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” the world’s most seismically active region. Some 90 percent of all earthquakes hit the Ring of Fire.

“The Ring of Fire isn’t quite a circular ring. It is shaped more like a 40,000-kilometer (25,000-mile) horseshoe. A string of 452 volcanoes stretches from the southern tip of South America, up along the coast of North America, across the Bering Strait, down through Japan, and into New Zealand. Several active and dormant volcanoes in Antarctica, however, ‘close’ the ring,” according to National Geographic.

According to the USGS, “The next most seismic region (5-6% of earthquakes) is the Alpide belt (extends from Mediterranean region, eastward through Turkey, Iran, and northern India.)”