{"id":27367,"date":"2018-04-09T23:18:40","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T23:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=27367"},"modified":"2018-04-09T23:18:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T23:18:40","slug":"santa-cruz-island-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2018\/04\/09\/santa-cruz-island-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Cruz island: rockfalls during the M=5.3 earthquake in California on Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"

Santa Cruz island: rockfalls during the M=5.3 earthquake in California on Thursday<\/h4>\n

On Thursday 5th April California was struck by a shallow (9.9 km depth) M=5.3 earthquake<\/a>.\u00a0 The epicentre of this event was located off the coast, 29 km to the south of Santa Cruz island, and almost due west of Los Angeles:<\/p>\n

\"Santa

USGS data<\/a> on the M=5.3 earthquake SW of Santa Cruz island on 5th April 2018.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

This earthquake was not sufficiently large to cause substantial damage, although it was felt over a large area.\u00a0 Probably the most interesting impact was that it triggered rockfalls on the coast of Santa Cruz island.\u00a0 These rockfalls were caught on camera from boats located off shore and posted online by both the Ventura County Fire Department and National Park Service.\u00a0 But Frank Horowitz<\/a>, a geophysicist at Cornell University<\/a>, kindly obtained permission for me to post the best of the images here:<\/p>\n

\"Santa

Rockfalls from the cliffs of Santa Cruz island in California, triggered by the M=5.3 earthquake on 5th April 2018. Image used with permission<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The image shows extensive dust generation as cliff instability is triggered.\u00a0 Note that falls are occurring on a number of locations.\u00a0 It is also interesting to note that the apparently displaced block to the right of centre does not appear to be unstable.<\/p>\n

The LA Times has an account<\/a> of these rockfalls from an eyewitness:-<\/p>\n

\n
\n

“There were a bunch of rocks falling everywhere around us,” one visitor<\/a> told KCBS-TV. “We were pretty close to the edge of the cliff and I thought it was going to split off,” another said.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is quite reminiscent of the rockfalls that were triggered by the 2010 Sierra Cucapah earthquake in Mexico<\/a>, which were captured on an excellent video<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Acknowledgement<\/h4>\n

Many thanks to Frank Horowitz at Cornell University for gaining access to the photograph above.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photographs taken from boats showed coastal cliff rockfalls on Santa Cruz island in California during the M=5.4 earthquake on Thursday 5th April<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":27377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[537],"tags":[137,243,183,23,469,725],"class_list":["post-27367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-earthquake-induced-landslide","tag-california","tag-cliff","tag-coast","tag-earthquake","tag-featured","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}