
The Newport–Inglewood Fault is a
right-lateral strike-slip fault in
Southern California
Southern California (commonly shortened to SoCal) is a geographic and Cultural area, cultural List of regions of California, region that generally comprises the southern portion of the U.S. state of California. Its densely populated coastal reg ...
. The fault extends for
(110 miles if the Rose Canyon segment is included) from
Culver City
Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. It is mostly surrounded by Los Angeles, but also shares a border with the unincorporated area of Ladera Heights to the ea ...
southeast through
Inglewood and other coastal communities to
Newport Beach
Newport Beach is a coastal city of about 85,000 in southern Orange County, California, United States. Located about southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Newport Beach is known for its sandy beaches. The city's harbor once supported maritime indu ...
at which point the fault extends east-southeast into the
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...
. The fault comes back on shore in the La Jolla area of San Diego and continues southward to downtown San Diego. In San Diego it is known as the
Rose Canyon Fault. The fault can be inferred on the Earth's surface as passing along and through a line of hills extending from
Signal Hill to
Culver City
Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. It is mostly surrounded by Los Angeles, but also shares a border with the unincorporated area of Ladera Heights to the ea ...
. The fault has a slip rate of approximately /year
and is predicted to be capable of a 6.0–7.4
magnitude earthquake on the
moment magnitude scale
The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mwg, 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. was defined in a 1979 paper ...
. A 2017 study concluded that, together, the Newport–Inglewood Fault and Rose Canyon Fault could produce an earthquake of 7.3 or 7.4 magnitude.
The fault was first identified after a magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck near
Inglewood, California
Inglewood is a city in southwestern Los Angeles County, California, United States, in the Greater Los Angeles, Greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census, the city had a population of 107,762. ...
on June 21, 1920. Due to the lack of earthquake-resistant construction in southern California at this time, this quake caused considerable damage in the Inglewood area and was a preview of what was to come almost 13 years later. The
Long Beach earthquake occurred on March 10, 1933, centered along the southern segment of this fault, and registering a magnitude 6.4; this quake killed 115 people and was the second most deadly earthquake in California history, after the
1906 San Francisco earthquake
At 05:12 AM Pacific Time Zone, Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906, the coast of Northern California was struck by a major earthquake with an estimated Moment magnitude scale, moment magnitude of 7.9 and a maximum Mercalli inte ...
. Seventy schools in the
Long Beach
Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...
and
Compton area were destroyed and an additional 120 were heavily damaged by the quake; had this tremor struck during school hours, the death toll would have been much higher, some estimates as high as 1000. In response to the poor performance of school structures, the California legislature passed the
Field Act in April, mandating earthquake-resistant construction for all new school buildings.
The Newport–Inglewood Fault is part of the larger system of right-lateral strike-slip faults, most prominently the
San Andreas Fault
The San Andreas Fault is a continental Fault (geology)#Strike-slip faults, right-lateral strike-slip transform fault that extends roughly through the U.S. state of California. It forms part of the tectonics, tectonic boundary between the Paci ...
, which comprise the transform zone which separates the
North American tectonic plate from the
Pacific plate. The irregular hills which occur along the fault trace are a result of deformation of the sedimentary rocks by the faulting; some of the earliest petroleum production in California tap reservoirs formed by the deformation.
In July 2015, Jim Boles, a
University of California at Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an independent teachers college, UCSB joine ...
professor, reported that
helium-3
Helium-3 (3He see also helion) is a light, stable isotope of helium with two protons and one neutron. (In contrast, the most common isotope, helium-4, has two protons and two neutrons.) Helium-3 and hydrogen-1 are the only stable nuclides with ...
was leaking naturally from oil wells up to deep, along a stretch from Los Angeles's Westside to Newport Beach, suggesting that the fault runs deep, though not necessarily changing the earthquake outlook.
References
Further reading
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*
External links
M6.8 Earthquake on the Newport Inglewood Fault (Huntington Beach)–
Southern California Earthquake Center
The Statewide California Earthquake Center (SCEC) is a collaboration of more than 1,000 scientists across 100 research institutions focused primarily on conducting research on earthquakes in Southern California and elsewhere by gathering data, c ...
Newport–Inglewood Fault Zone– Southern California Earthquake Data Center
Earthquake faults in the South Bay – Palos Verdes FaultLate Cenozoic Tectonics of Southern CaliforniaHelium rising through the Newport–Inglewood fault zone*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Newport-Inglewood Fault
Seismic faults of California
Natural history of Los Angeles County, California
Natural history of Orange County, California