Experts hope the 5.4 quake will remind people to be prepared. A regionwide quake drill planned for November is already getting more attention.
Southern California has been hit by more than 90 small aftershocks from the 5.4 Chino Hills earthquake, an event officials hope will increase awareness about the danger of an much larger temblor to come.
The 5.4 temblor Tuesday caused little damage, but it was the first quake of its size to hit a metropolitan part of California since the much larger and more destructive 1994 Northridge quake. Quake-safety advocates believe this lull in seismic activity in heavily populated area has made it harder for them to push new laws and quake building standards.
“Any time you don’t have an earthquake for a long time, people’s concerns go elsewhere,” said Kate Hutton, a staff seismologist at Caltech. “There’s nothing like a good shake to their minds.”
Hutton and her colleagues have determined that they usually have two days of a “teachable moment” to promote safety awareness.
“The attention will certainly go away,” said Hutton, who caught four hours sleep and was losing her voice from doing so many interviews since the temblor struck. “We can only hope to get a little shake once in a while to remind us.”
Lucy Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey said there’s already been a positive effect of the Chino Hills quake. She and other experts have struggled over the last few months to advertise a regional earthquake drill in November called the Great Southern California ShakeOut.
Cities and businesses are being asked to sign up and participate.
“We were getting 10 to 30 registrations a day,” Jones said. “Yesterday, we got 400.”
Jones said she was not surprised.
“A lot of people think we’ve solved the problem” of earthquake preparedness, she said. “It’s easy not to think about the work we have to do.”
Most of the aftershocks were tiny. But one measured 3.8.
Image sources from latimes.com
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