Los+Angeles+(1994)

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=__**Los Angeles (1994) an earthquake in northridge.**__=

__Section 1: Background to the Earthquake__

 * 34.21306°N 118.53694°W
 * Occurred on January 17 1994, at 4:31am
 * Had a depth of 18.4km
 * Located near the San Andreas Fault
 * 10 miles beneath the town of Northridge
 * Transformation Fault from the Pacific Plate moving north-west and the North-American Plate moving South-East
 * Epicentre located in a very urban area within western suburbs of Los Angeles.
 * Occurred in the densely populated San Fernando Valley, a mostly residential urban area being one of the most well prepared for earthquakes.

__Section 2: What happened?__

 * []
 * The earthquake occurred here because of the movement of the San Andreas fault, the earthquake occurred on a blind thrust fault, and produced the strongest ground motions ever instrumentally recorded in an urban setting in North America.
 * Richter scale reading:6.7
 * Mercalli scale reading: Highest reading of IX in Santa Monica and San Fernando Valley, down to V from distances of 96 to 320km from the center.
 * Primary Hazards:
 * Ground shaking
 * Peak horizontal ground accelerations approached or exceeded 1g in the region of the epicentre
 * The peak vertical acceleration measured 0.48g
 * 14,000 aftershocks
 * Secondary Hazards:
 * Some liquefaction occurred at Simi Valley and in some other parts of the Los Angeles Basin.
 * 110 fires around the area



__Section 3:What was the impact of the earthquake__?

 * __Economic:__**
 * preliminary damage estimate was 15-17$ billion to homes, public buildings, freeways, and bridges.
 * Over time, the Average Reported Estimated Direct Loss has been calculated to be 41$ billion
 * Of the direct losses, the damage to each area was:
 * 10% public sector
 * 1% utlities
 * 37% commercial/industrial sector
 * 47% residential sector
 * 3% transport and lifelines
 * 7.7$ billion in indirect losses

> governments to reassess the levels of disaster aid, particularly in the current climate of shrinking > budgets and federal cutbacks. The focus of government has increasingly shifted from post-disaster > relief operations to pre-disaster. The stated mitigation goal of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) is to reduce natural disaster losses by half by the year 2010.
 * __Social:__**
 * 57 people killed
 * 20,000 homeless
 * 40,000 buildings damaged
 * People who lost their homes received at most partial recompensation and had to find means to recover from their loss.
 * People stopped spending and started saving up.
 * By reducing spending this affected the small businesses.
 * 60,000 people migrated and only 20,000 moved into the area. The people who moved in were mostly Hispanic and Koreans, generally poorer than their housing predecessors. This changed the social structure of the area.
 * The downtown areas of Whittier, Santa Cruz and Northridge were slow to recover
 * __Political:__**
 * The Northridge earthquake led to a number of legislative changes. Due to the large amount lost by insurance companies because of the earthqu ake, most insurance companies either stopped offering or severely restricted earthquake insurance in California (and elsewhere).
 * The scale of losses inflicted by the Northridge earthquake has forced both federal and state

__Section 4: Evaluation__

 * Northridge earthquake demonstrated the success of a modern building code in reducing deaths and injuries to a very small fraction of the affected population. Most of the buildings were built within the last three decades, and were considered to be reasonably earthquake resistant.

Sources: [] [] [] [] []_ []
 * [|http://geohazards.cr.usgs.gov]**
 * []**