The Bay Area was shaken on Friday night by an earthquake of magnitude 3.7, which was centered at San Francisco’s international airport. No damage was reported, though.
The mild earthquake occurred at roughly 7 p.m. and occurred around 7 miles (12 km) under the San Francisco International Airport, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Robert de Groot, a ShakeAlert operational lead with the Geological Survey, told the San Francisco Chronicle that the airport is located in an earthquake-prone area because it is sandwiched among the San Andreas and Hayward faults.
According to the USGS, the earthquake struck at 6:38 p.m. The earthquake was originally recorded as having a magnitude of 4.0, but as of 7:40 p.m., it had been lowered to 3.7.
Airport personnel concluded their inspections of the runway at SFO. No damages were recorded.
The earthquake measured 8.2 miles deep. Oakland and San Francisco both felt the quake.
Trains operating on San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system slowed down on Friday night in order to finish examining the tracks for any damage.
For approximately twenty minutes, BART service was suspended. The trains are again running again as of 7 p.m.
The San Francisco Bay Area was shaken by an earthquake that caused some people to feel as though a big object had struck a nearby structure.
Although the earthquake was small by Californian standards, it was noteworthy because it occurred right beneath a large airport close to the San Andreas Fault, a key fault that connects Northern and Southern California.
The airport handled over 20 million travelers last year, and its control room tower was built to survive an earthquake of magnitude 8.0.
One Millbrae resident said it sounded like a truck smashing into something on X, the previous Twitter.
Felt it in Millbrae. Heard like a truck crashing into something then felt the jolt.
— Angelita Rojo (@arojo1976) October 28, 2023
As per an X poster, the sensation was felt all the way down to Santa Cruz.
One resident wrote on X that the earthquake made her “whole apartment movinnnnn.”
This the first earthquake I ever felt AND NOW KNOW WHY PEOPLE ALWAYS TALK ABOUT IT THAT HAD MY WHOLE APARTMENT MOVINNNNN 😂 tf https://t.co/UbpvR7IAn5
— honeyybunlinaa (@honeyybunlinaa) October 28, 2023
Recently Earthquakes
The past few weeks have seen a lot of seismic activity in Northern California. Californians were taken aback on October 18 when they noticed a message on their phones alerting them of a significant upcoming earthquake.
Fortunately, the magnitude 4.1 earthquake that struck Sacramento County close to Isleton was only a small tremor. A 2.9 magnitude earthquake that struck on Monday off Twitchell Island in the Delta, three miles south of Isleton, shook the region once more.
Seismologists and meteorologists concur that there is no connection between weather and earthquakes, despite the fact that it may appear as though “earthquake weather” is in the air.
Several eastern San Francisco Bay Area communities, including Berkeley, home of the University of California’s main campus, Antioch, Concord, and Fairfield, felt the tremor.
The yearly Great ShakeOut, which tests emergency systems worldwide for earthquake readiness and involves thousands of MyShake app users, was held the day before the Isleton earthquake.
Additionally, that earthquake happened just one day after the thirty-fourth anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which shook the San Francisco Bay Area and left about 3,800 people injured and dead. The devastation caused more than $10 billion in damages.
Christine Goulet, director of the USGS’s Earthquake Science Center in the city of Los Angeles, stated on Friday that it is actually fairly normal for two earthquakes to strike in the same area in a small quantity of time.
According to Goulet, there were little earthquakes that frequently occurred in seismically active areas. He continued by saying that they sometimes refer to them as a swarm when there are many of them gathered together over time in a relatively small area.
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