The Landers Quake.....Prelude to a Desert Fall

What were you doing the morning of June 28, 1992 at 4:57 am?.....I was asleep, quietly minding my own business when my bed began to shake.....Then our entire Mobile Home began to move from side to side and a little up and down motion was set in there as well....But I had done something for earthquake security that I had recently seen on TV....I tied both sides of the mobile together with 1/4 inch 10 inch long steel straps....I then did the same thing to our 12 by 30 foot porch....I had read that all three units moved as one instead of pulling apart and slamming into each other, the home would survive much better....It was a good idea....We survived intact while many others crashed apart.

The Landers quake was probably one of the best studied quakes at the time....Scientists were able to see the morning of the quake the effects it had on roadways and the northern desert landscape...It was pretty dramatic....The Quake was a 7.3 , and it rolled across the entire southwest....It might have even been the precursor for that same day event in Big Bear, a 6.4 quake that scarred everyone else not already scarred.....I remember my sister was taking a shower at the time and did not feel a thing.....But I was outside still checking mobile homes....we wanted to be sure that we did not miss any gas leaks, cracks or anything that might endanger a home later on.

One thing scientists were able to determine was, this was not a single fault zone slippage....Among the Dozen or so other fault zones ruptured, were the Johnson Valley, Landers, Homestead Valley, Emerson, and the Camp Rock Fault zones.....The quake was preceded a few months earlier by the Joshua Tree M6.3 earthquake on April 22.....A aftershock sequence followed and consisted of thousands of tremors, including 143 quakes registered M4.0 or stronger, 19 of which measured M5.0 or stronger.....The most recent moderate aftershock was the Joshua Tree M5.0 earthquake on May 14, 1999.

Vigorous shaking was felt 100 miles away in Los Angeles and the quake was felt as far away as Central California and Las Vegas, Nevada......One person was killed, 25 were seriously injured and another 372 were treated for some sort of earthquake related injuries......The total property damage value was on the order of $56 million and included collapsed buildings, ruptured utility lines, and widespread nonstructural damage......One Mobile Home Park in Yucca Valley on Highway 62 suffered sever damage to several homes when they crashed into each other and collapsed.

Three items of notable interest came out regarding this quake.....The quake ruptured disconnected surface traces of several known and a few unknown faults for a distance of 53 miles......The displacement was two to three times larger than generally anticipated for these faults, with maximum horizontal offsets of 15-20 feet across a zone 30-60 feet wide; and as a consequent, the magnitude was much larger than envisioned by seismologist and geologists for these individual faults.

Interestingly, thousands of mini quakes were recorded throughout the western U.S. within minutes of the jolt and lasted for several months.....Most notable was the Little Skull Mountain M5.6 earthquake near the Nevada Test Site and the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository the day following the Landers quake and a M5.5 jolt on the Garlock fault on July 11.....So much activity was recorded at the volcanoes at Mammoth Lakes that the entire area was put on alert.....Other Volcanoes to be put on alert because of Mountain Quakes, were Mt. Shasta and Yellowstone National Monument......In fact several notable geological features at Yellowstone have increased to change....Most notable is Old Faithful....Tourists are no longer permitted to visit the famous geyser because it is no longer stable and the mud flats of the Yellowstone Valley increase in temperature a little bit each month making them to dangerous for people to visit.

Previous to the Landers Quake, the largest historic earthquake in Southern California was the Fort Tejon 8.0 earthquake in 1852.

Are you ready for the next one?....We think and hope we are.

Gary Hall the ghostpainter.