5.4 Earthquake Hits Northern California on New Year’s Day, Second in Two Weeks

An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 struck Northern California on New Year’s Day — less than two weeks after a larger, 6.4 magnitude quake struck the coast nearby.

NBC reported on the quake, which struck onshore in Humboldt County:

The New Year’s Day earthquake had a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 and struck about 9 miles southeast of Rio Dell in Humboldt County just after 10:30 a.m. local time (1:35 p.m. ET) Sunday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said damages to homes were reported in the City of Rio Dell, while at half of the city’s residents were without power Sunday and around 30% without water. It said restoration efforts were underway.

No injuries were reported and there was no tsunami generated by the quake.

As Breitbart News reported, the Dec. 20 quake caused power outages across the county, and several aftershocks:

The event was reported at 2:34 a.m. local time [Dec. 20], originating at a depth of 10 miles and centered some 7.5 miles southwest of Ferndale, Humboldt County – 130 miles north of San Francisco, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

…

The quake was large enough to trigger a “ShakeAlert” that was sent to cellphones by FEMA’s Wireless Emergency Alert System, officials said.

Earthquakes are measured using the Moment Magnitude Scale, which replaced the earlier Richter Scale, named for seismologist Charles Richter, who was the first to use a logarithmic scale to measure the phenomenon. The new scale is still logarithmic, meaning that the Dec. 20 quake, at 6.4, was ten times larger than the New Year’s Day quake, at 5.4. Richter’s ideas still inform calculations and predictions of seismic events.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.