Dozens of earthquakes strike off the coast of Oregon, but experts say there’s nothing to worry about

Shortly after midnight on Tuesday, a 4.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Oregon. It was nothing new, because earthquakes happen outside all the time.

An hour and a half later, another jerk shook the sea floor.

Then another earthquake struck. And another. And another.

So far, seismologists have been really paying attention. Nearly 30 earthquakes that day occurred along the western portion of the Blanco fracture zone, a plate boundary nearly 200 miles long off the state’s coast, according to data from the US Geological Survey. The strongest recorded jerk was 5.8 degrees and the smallest was 3.4.

By Wednesday afternoon, at least 66 earthquakes had been recorded in the area, Susan Hogg, a USGS seismologist in Pasadena, California, said that day. The earthquakes did not stop by Wednesday night.

If these many earthquakes had struck a different region, such as the San Andreas Super Fault in California, there could be chaos and destruction.

This series of small and medium earthquakes, known in seismic language as a swarm, was not a cause for concern, said Don Blackman, a geophysicist with the USGS National Earthquake Information Center.

“That’s how the land works in that spot,” he said, adding that the area was a “fairly active area.”

He said that someone on a beach 250 miles from the fault might feel the ground shaking, but they don’t have to worry about a tsunami or strong earthquake near them.

The National Weather Service boredly reminded people of this fact on Twitter Wednesday morning.

“For the seventh time in the last 16 hours… an unexpected tsunami with earthquake off the southern coast of Oregon,” the agency wrote.

Indeed, the Blanco fracture zone is extremely unlikely to generate a tsunami, Douglas Tommy, a professor of geophysics at the University of Oregon, said Wednesday.

The Blanco fault zone is what is known as a battering slip fault, which means that its sides move horizontally side-by-side. Think about when “someone rubs their hands together,” Tommy said. In order for a tsunami to occur, the sea floor must shift up or down. (Other types of faults have vertical movement, which can generate tsunamis).

Although tsunamis are impossible to occur along the Blanco fracture zone, earthquakes are fairly frequent there.

“If they had a seismograph on the ocean floor, it would be recording earthquakes every week,” Tommy said.

He said he wasn’t “totally surprised” when he heard about the swarm, but added that the number and size of the tremors were “a little unusual.”

This quake may have been overshadowed by a 2005 swarm, Hogg said, because the strongest earthquake has a magnitude of 6.6.

Although there may have been swarms in the past that caused a number of tremors similar to those this week, the USGS has not monitored the swarms as closely as they do now.

It wasn’t clear what caused the swarm, but Hogg said there was a theory that swarms, in general, could be caused by fluids “moving around” once they enter the Earth’s crust.

“We don’t really understand why the swarms started,” she said.

It’s hard to predict when the swarm will end, she said, but one can go as long as a week in some areas of California.

In an earthquake, the stresses that build up along the fault reach the breaking point, releasing huge amounts of energy. This can lead to near misses, similar to flipping a row of dominoes.

It’s possible, though “extremely unlikely,” Hogg said, that a swarm from the Blanco fault zone could release the Cascadia subduction zone, which lies 100 miles to the east.

The Cascadia region, a rift that extends from northern California to Vancouver Island, is like the Blanco region of the largest and most terrifying fracture. It is closer to the coast and much longer, and can move vertically in the event of an earthquake. Seismologists said a strong earthquake there could devastate the Pacific Northwest.

But, once again, experts said there was no reason to worry about the swarm along the Blanco fracture zone. However, its neighbor to the south is more alarming.

The Blanco area is the same type of fault as the San Andreas fault, but that’s all they have in common. According to the USGS, the San Andreas is a long fault that runs down the spine of California, and there is a risk of a major earthquake along parts of it. In California lore, this long-feared earthquake is known as the Great Earthquake.

Hogg said the Blanco Zone is not expected to cause such a strong earthquake because the Earth’s crust is much thinner than that of the San Andreas fault zone.

“It’s like the mistake of going through a piece of tissue paper, as opposed to cardboard,” she said.

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