Long Overdue Eastern Sierra Quake Could Rock Reno, Lake Tahoe

RENO - A long-overdue earthquake along the California-Nevada state line could devastate Reno and Lake Tahoe with the kind of destruction that violently shook southern Japan when a magnitude 7.3 temblor struck, according to scientists who gathered in Reno this week.

The Sierra’s eastern front is expected to experience a magnitude-7 earthquake on average every 30 years. It's been six decades since an earthquake that large has been registered, KQED reported.

“This is an opportunity to scare you a little bit, or hopefully a lot,” Nevada Seismological Laboratory Director Graham Kent was quoted as saying, as scientists gathered in Reno at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting just days after two powerful earthquakes along the so-called earthquake ring of fire rocked separate sections of the world in Equador (magnitude 7.8) and Japan (magnitude 7.3).

The earthquake faults running throughout California lay within the ring of fire.

Seismologists said it’s likely Reno, Lake Tahoe, and possibly Las Vegas, will eventually experience the kind of massive quake that hit Japan, where KQED reports nearly 1,200 houses were destroyed in and around Kumamoto.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates a magnitude-6 quake could cause up to $1.9 billion in damage in the Reno-Sparks area and $590 million at Lake Tahoe, according to Kent.

You can find real-time information about earthquakes in California and the elsewhere in the world on from the USGS website. The USGS is located in Menlo Park.

FEMA gives earthquake safety information for use at home at this site.

You can read the full KQED report here.

-image via Darron Birgenheier, and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.