The 1992 Landers earthquake and surface faulting

Abstract

Faulting associated with the June 28, 992, earthquake near Landers, California, broke the surface of the ground over a length of more than 70 km, the longest surface rupture in the United States since the great San Francisco quake of 1906. the strongest shaking associated with this magnitude 7.6 (M S ) earthquake, the largest in the contiguous 48 states in the last 40 years, occurred in a sparsely populated sections of the Mojave Desert more than 200 km east of Los Angeles. the earthquake began with a sudden slip on the Johnson Valley fault about 10 km southwest of Landers. The initial fault movement probably occurred at a depth of less than 10 km. Surface faulting then propagated over 70 km to the north and northeast. The faulting linked preexisting faults-some previously known and mapped and others previously unknown-into a complex, coherent rupture zone.