26 martie 1872: cutremur major in Owens Valley, California: Mw intre
7,4 si
7,9 (estimare).
Description:
The
1872 Lone Pine earthquake struck on
March 26 at 02:30 local time with an estimated
moment magnitude of
7.4 to
7.9 and a maximum
Mercalli Intensity of
X (
Extreme). Its
epicenter was near
Lone Pine, California, in
Owens Valley. It was one of the largest
earthquakes to hit California in
recorded history and was similar in size to the
1906 San Francisco earthquake. Twenty-seven people were killed and fifty-six were injured.
The earthquake occurred on a Tuesday morning and leveled almost all the buildings in Lone Pine and nearby settlements. Of the estimated 250?300 inhabitants of Lone Pine, 27 are known to have perished and 52 of the 59 houses were destroyed. One report states that the main buildings were thrown down in almost every town in
Inyo County. About 130 kilometers (81 mi) south of Lone Pine, at
Indian Wells, Kern County, California,
adobe houses sustained cracks. Property loss has been estimated at $250,000 (equivalent to $5,228,472 in 2018). As in many earthquakes, adobe, stone and
masonry structures fared worse than wooden ones which prompted the closing of nearby
Camp Independence which was an adobe structure destroyed in the quake.
The quake was felt strongly as far away as
Sacramento, where citizens were startled out of bed and into the streets. Giant
rockslides in what is now
Yosemite National Park woke naturalist
John Muir, then living in
Yosemite Valley, who reportedly ran out of his cabin shouting, "A noble earthquake!" and promptly made a moonlit survey of the fresh
talus piles. This earthquake stopped clocks and awakened people in
San Diego, California, to the south,
Red Bluff, California, to the north, and
Elko, Nevada, to the east. The shock was felt over most of California and much of
Nevada. Thousands of
aftershocks occurred, some severe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1872_Owens_Valley_earthquake
