Magnitude 5.7 earthquake strikes Mauna Loa active volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island
4.6-magnitude earthquake shakes greater L.A.; no reports of significant damage
HONOLULU – A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck the world’s largest active volcano on Friday – Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii – knocking items off shelves and cutting power in a nearby town but not immediately prompting reports of serious damage.
The earthquake, which didn’t cause a tsunami and which the U.S. Geological Survey initially reported as magnitude 6.3, was centered on Mauna Loa’s southern flank at a depth of 23 miles (37 kilometers), 1.3 miles (2 kilometers) southwest of Pahala.
“It shook us bad to where it wobbled some knees a little bit,” said Derek Nelson, the manager of the Kona Canoe Club restaurant in the oceanside community of Kona, on the island’s western side. “It shook all the windows in the village.”
There was a power outage affecting about 300 customers in Naalehu that appeared to be related to the earthquake, said Darren Pai, spokesperson for Hawaiian Electric Company.
The earthquake struck after 10 a.m. local time, less than two hours before an unrelated quake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.6 shook Southern California.
Mauna Loa last erupted in late 2022. It’s one of five volcanoes that make up the Big Island, which is the southernmost in the Hawaiian archipelago.
Earthquakes can occur in Hawaii for a variety of reasons, including magma moving under the surface. In Friday’s case, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the likely cause was the weight of the Hawaiian Islands bending and stressing the Earth’s crust and upper mantle.
That’s what caused a
LOS ANGELES – A 4.6-magnitude earthquake struck the Southern California coast near Malibu on Friday and was widely felt in the Los Angeles region, rattling windows and shaking shelves but bringing no reports of major damage or injuries.
The area of the epicenter was in the rugged Santa Monica Mountains, roughly 35 miles (56 kilometers) west of downtown Los Angeles. The range rises steeply from the coastline, and the nearest homes to the epicenter are on a narrow strip of development along the shore or scattered in the ridges and canyons. The quake struck at 1:47 p.m. at a depth of about 8 miles (13 kilometers), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
It was felt from the Malibu coast north to Bakersfield, south to San Diego and east to downtown Los Angeles. Some people said they felt the quake as a jolt, while others described more of a swaying motion.
Anthony Valdez, an associate at the Surfing Cowboys store in Malibu, said it shook long and hard enough that he wondered if it was going to grow to become a big one. So he hurried out to the street.
“I work in a shop with surfboards hanging from the ceiling, so I’m not going to go out from a surfboard bonking me on top of my head. I’d rather run magnitude 6.9 earthquake that struck off Kiholo Bay on the Big Island’s northwest coast in 2006. That temblor damaged roads and buildings and knocked out power as far away as Honolulu, on the island of Oahu, about 200 miles (322 kilometers) to the north.
Helen Janiszewski, an assistant professor in the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Department of Earth Sciences, said the Hawaiian Islands lie on the Pacific oceanic tectonic plate and have some of the world’s biggest volcanoes.
“So there’s a huge out,” he said.
The quake was not related to a 5.7-magnitude shock that hit Hawaii’s Big Island on Friday, seismologist Lucy Jones said.
Jones said the magnitude of the quake was not of a severity that would cause expectations of damage.
“It’s sort of run-of-the-mill for earthquake country,” Jones said.
About 91,000 people got alerts from the Myshake app, according to Calfornia’s Office of Emergency Services.
Elizabeth Ackerman was working from home in her family’s apartment in the San Fernando Valley when the quake hit.
The communications specialist was doing some magazine editing when she felt “a sharp shock, like the jolt of a roller coaster car at the beginning of a ride,” she wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The couch felt like it moved under her, she told The Associated Press in a phone interview, as the window blinds shook and a birthday banner for her 14-year-old son swung on the wall. She dove under her dining table just in case the shaking continued.
At Broad Street Oyster Co. in Malibu, Anthony Benavidez said everyone froze for a few seconds when the ground started moving.
“It was a good shake,” he said. “It wasn’t super bad. We just were making sure nothing fell off the shelves.”
amount of mass of rock associated with the islands and because of that, it’s actually enough to slightly displace the Pacific oceanic plate beneath the islands,” she said. “And that force causes earthquakes sometimes.”
This type of earthquake tends to occur several tens of kilometers beneath the Earth’s surface in the mantle, Janiszewski said. Quakes caused by moving magma tend to hit more shallow depths.
The observatory said Friday’s earthquake didn’t affect either Mauna Loa
or a neighboring volcano, Kilauea.
There were no immediate reports of damage to telescopes on the summit of Mauna Kea, another nearby volcano that has some of the world’s most advanced observatories for studying the night sky.
Jessica Ferracane, a spokesperson at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, said there was no apparent damage to its roads or visitor centers. Earthquakes are not uncommon, she said, but this one was “much more intense” than usual.