Coast. and short while ago, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake was felt. i pause on that number. because it s just been updated. we had it as 6.9 the early read. that s been upgraded to 7.1. that tells you how much stronger it is compared to yesterday. 6.4. we re realizing that yesterday was a fore shock. with today seemingly being the main thing. they are not ruling out there maybe a stronger quake to come. in the even today could end up being the fore shock to something else. an earthquake sequence that is ongoing. we just got the explanation. i want to go to alex fields also in ridge crest. tell me more. you told me of the scene you saw when you left the restaurant where you were.
That s what we saw here. these two earthquakes are very relatively closely located. the triggers typically doesn t happen at a dpraet distance. it s close by. i can t think of any example where we have seen this type of fore shock triggering that isn t within just matter of a few kilometers. the famous widespread one. superstition hill. a 6.2 on a southwest striking fault and set off a 6.6 on the northwest striking fault. the epicenter of the ranch was here. the fault extended down the superstition hill. and what we were seeing after shocks pounding at the superstition hills fault into the time the earthquake happened. the main shock. we have a similar situation here. we have had after shocks along the fault. we had the 5.4. breaking through a big toward the northwest. and had it again.
They d experienced the worst of the shaking thursday. it turned out the largest earthquake to hit southern california in 20 years, a 6.4-magnitude quake, was just a fore-shock. oh, my god. oh, my god. reporter: at about 8:20 friday night, the violent jolt from a 7.1-magnitude quake traumatized the town again. cars just started dancing. the dogs were freaking out. the cattle behind us were going nuts. reporter: it ruptured gas lines, caused fires. everybody okay? reporter: knocked out power. [ siren ] left some residents scraped and bruised. and at the very least, scared. many of them are sleeping outside tonight. we are offering any services as noted earlier. we have places for people to shelter here. but many are choosing to just be with their neighbors, both in their sidewalks, in their
Address, and some of them are in the streets. reporter: in the nearby city of bakersfield, the shifting earth sent rocks cascading on to a highway and created cracks along the highway. across the california border in las vegas, the shaking sent a wave of panic in the stands during the nba las vegas summer league game. and more than 150 miles away in los angeles, tens of thousands of l.a. dodgers fans felt the familiar yet unnerving jostling from the quake, though the game went on. near the epicenter, seismologists say there is still a chance that the 7.1 is only a fore-shock. but the more likely scenario is strong aftershocks that go on for days. very energetic system sequence. so there s no reason to think that we can t have more large earthquakes. reporter: and this has been felt as far away as mexico, also
Happen there. does this help that research? well, we will go in and look, but i spent a couple of decades trying to find something that was different about fore shocks about other earthquakes and never found it. we have more data, we have much better stations than we had for any previous fore shocks we looked at. if there s something there we ll try to find it but it s not obvious. you talked about the probability of a 7 or greater magnitude. is there a possibility this could be another fore shock. yes, included in that approximately 1 in 10 chance of a 7.0 or bigger. 3.8 coming in. what s your plan over the next couple of weeks or so
Understand help us understand, i should say, what people can expect over the next couple of days. thousands more aftershocks. now, we re not talking about, victor, good morning, as far as 5.0, 6.0 intensity, those will diminish as far as their intensity and frequency, nevertheless, we re not done with still moving the earth. that s equivalent to 45 hiroshima bombs. that s what we know. and what we don t know, that s key as well. here s the main quake which by the way we thought the 6.4 was. but, no, that was a foreshock. that is a very high number for a foreshock. 7.1, the chances of getting something stronger than 7.1 are 4%. nobody is going to tell you that s going to happen. that s what folks are afraid of
Yesterday s earthquake but released more than 11 times the amount of energy than yesterday s earthquake. our metrologists are helping me get the terminology on that. we ll come back to you. i want to go to your metrologist right now. what do we need to know at this hour? just as sarah quoted dr. jones saying that the aftershocks are going to occur for years. we see this often around the world with the ring of fire where there s a major earthquake or great earthquake. the earthquake or the fore shock that we saw yesterday, that was considered a strong earthquake. this 7.1 magnitude earthquake is considered a strong earthquake or major earthquake and it was very shallow. that was the interesting thing in looking at the data on this. and right before this earthquake occurred, there was a 5.0 magnitude fore shock. it too was shallow.
absolutely. karen maginnis, thank you very much. and the usgs official, karen, were telling us there is a 10% chance we could have another 7 magnitude scale earthquake in the next 24 hours or even in the next week or so. so we re going to have to keep a very close eye on what s happening. there are going to be many, many after shocks. you just told us about the 5.1 there could be, there could be another 7 magnitude shock at some point in the coming days. i just want to cycle through some of the videos and update you on what s happening. so about three hours ago in southern california, the town of ridgecrest was the epicenter of a 7.1 magnitude quake, which turned out to be the main event after yesterday, yesterday being the foreshock. now this is a dollar general store. and we re getting more and more video like this that s showing us just what happens after the earthquake. this is the aftermath that you see. everything just falling off the shelves.
Internal damage you can t see from the outside. they evacuated patients, brought them out. they were treating them in the parking lot here. they ve since moved them back inside. officials will be going door to door, building to building today to look for that damage that may not be obvious to the naked eye. there is some damage, though, that actually is obvious to the naked eye. our crew was in a mobile home park and they saw all of those mobile homes it was practically unlivable. we spoke with another guy named warren cooper. i think we have sound from warren. everybody okay? reporter: panic throughout the city. inside businesses and in the streets. the massive 7.1 quake shook this town a day after being rocked by a magnitude 6.4 foreshock on the fourth of july. everything gone. yeah. reporter: the violent shaking
About what happens next. we turn to peggy helwig, seismologist at the u.s. berkeley seismological laboratory. i m glad i was kind of able to get that out, at least the pronunciation. the question now is next, will we get something bigger than the 7.1? is this a fore-shock? just say yes or no, you re probably going to say we don t know. we don t know. the answer is earthquakes are more difficult to predict than what congress and the president will do. so as we look then at the two quakes that we ve had over the course of three days now, 2.5 days, what would be the headline you think from this in the history books five years from now? so my guess is that there will be a lot of aftershocks. this is a very productive aftershock sequence already. there are lots of aftershocks happening it, and they will go on for a couple of years, maybe