CALIFORNIA—The epicenter of the two back to back earthquakes struck the San Fernando Valley at a magnitude of 3.3 around 3:19 a.m. Monday, May 4 and another one with a preliminary 3.2 magnitude at 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, May 3. They both had a depth of approximately four miles.
According to U.S. Geological Survey, the first shake was felt near Chatsworth, in the San Fernando Valley. Hundreds of people felt the impact and woke up, reporting the incident within 20 minutes of the initial shake. There has not been any recent reports of damages or fatalities.
“Woke me from a dead sleep. Lots of loud rattling. That was a crazy jolt,” a resident in Los Angeles wrote on Twitter.
“I also felt it in Studio City,” someone else replied.
The USGS recorded the second earthquake to be less than half a mile from Chatsworth, 4.1 miles from Canoga Park, 4.5 miles from Northridge, and 7.5 miles from Simi Valley.
Dr. Lucy Jones, a prominent seismologist, tweeted, “The probability that a quake will be a foreshock is not affected by it occurring in a cluster. Every quake has about a 5% chance of being followed by something bigger within 3 days,” Jones wrote. “The two Chatsworth quakes are within the area of the Northridge aftershocks.”
This has been the second/third earthquake to hit near the Los Angeles area within a three-week period, after the 3.7 magnitude quake that struck on April 22. This area has a high number of fault lines which results in several small earthquakes from time to time with magnitudes between 3.0 to 4.0.
