The 1932 Eureka earthquake occurred on June 6 at along the northern coastal area of California in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

. With a

moment magnitude The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mw, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. It was defined in a 1979 pape ...

of 6.4 and a maximum

Mercalli intensity The Modified Mercalli intensity scale (MM, MMI, or MCS), developed from Giuseppe Mercalli's Mercalli intensity scale of 1902, is a seismic intensity scale used for measuring the intensity of shaking produced by an earthquake. It measures the eff ...

of VIII (''Severe''), this earthquake left one person dead from a falling chimney and several injured. The shock was the largest in the area since 1923 and was felt in southern Oregon and northern California.

Tectonic setting

Near

Cape Mendocino Cape Mendocino (Spanish: ''Cabo Mendocino'', meaning "Cape of Mendoza"), which is located approximately north of San Francisco, is located on the Lost Coast entirely within Humboldt County, California, United States. At 124° 24' 34" W longitude ...

, the Mendocino Triple Junction is an area of active seismicity where three tectonic plates come together. The

Mendocino Fracture Zone The Mendocino Fracture Zone is a fracture zone and transform boundary over 4000 km (2500 miles) long, starting off the coast of Cape Mendocino in far northern California. It runs westward from a triple junction with the San Andreas Fault a ...

(also known as the Mendocino Fault east of the

Gorda Ridge The Gorda Ridge (41°36'19.6"N 127°22'03.1"W), aka ''Gorda Ridges'' tectonic spreading center, is located roughly off the northern coast of California and southern Oregon. Running NE – SW it is roughly in length.Carey, Stein, & Rona. (1990). ...

) is a

transform fault A transform fault or transform boundary, is a fault along a plate boundary where the motion is predominantly horizontal. It ends abruptly where it connects to another plate boundary, either another transform, a spreading ridge, or a subduct ...

that separates the

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

and

Gorda Plate The Gorda Plate, located beneath the Pacific Ocean off the coast of northern California, is one of the northern remnants of the Farallon Plate. It is sometimes referred to (by, for example, publications from the USGS Earthquake Hazards Program) a ...

s. To the south, the relative motion between the Pacific Plate and

North American Plate The North American Plate is a tectonic plate covering most of North America, Cuba, the Bahamas, extreme northeastern Asia, and parts of Iceland and the Azores. With an area of , it is the Earth's second largest tectonic plate, behind the Pacif ...

is accommodated by the

San Andreas Fault The San Andreas Fault is a continental transform fault that extends roughly through California. It forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, and its motion is right-lateral strike-slip (horizonta ...

, and to the north, the Gorda Plate is converging with the North American Plate at the

Cascadia Subduction Zone The Cascadia subduction zone is a convergent plate boundary that stretches from northern Vancouver Island in Canada to Northern California in the United States. It is a very long, sloping subduction zone where the Explorer, Juan de Fuca, a ...

References

External links

M 6.4 - Northern California
–

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

* {{Earthquakes in the United States 1932 earthquakes Earthquakes in California History of Humboldt County, California

Tectonic setting

See also

References

External links