A great earthquake occurred at 00:58:49 (UTC) on Sunday, December 26, 2004. The magnitude 9.0 event has been located OFF THE WEST COAST OF NORTHERN SUMATRA.

For years SCEC Education Specialist Bob de Groot had heard about the "Parkfield Experiment" in textbooks, lectures, and films. On September 28th he experienced his first earthquake on the San Andreas fault at Parkfield. As an added bonus, he was standing on the platform of the drill rig (9.5 meters high) being used for the EarthScope San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) project.

Painted lines on Highway 46 at Cholame Creek illustrate the offset of the San Andreas Fault as a result of the Magnitude 6 earthquake.

Source: Mark Zoback, Stanford University

At 10:15 am local time on September 28, 2004, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake occurred along the San Andreas fault near the town of Parkfield, in central California. It was followed by a series of aftershocks.

Special Report: Lights, Camera, Shake, Rattle, and Roll: A SCEC Education Specialist Gets Shaken Up At Parkfield

The Parkfield area is heavily instrumented, so this earthquake should yield a wealth of data for scientists. More information on this important seismic event is available from the California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN), the Menlo Park office of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and the California Geological Survey.

Maps of current earthquake activity can be found at the Southern California Earthquake Data Center; a special Parkfield area map is available from the USGS, and includes labeled fault segments.

USGS press release

A moderate earthquake occurred at 22:28:48 (UTC) on Tuesday, June 15, 2004. The magnitude 5.3 event has been located OFFSHORE BAJA CALIFORNIA, MEXICO

On Thursday, May 27th at 8:00 PM the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pasadena Office will continue their free Public Lectures with the last lecture of the 2003-2004 series. The presentation, entitled "Finding Faults in Los Angeles" will be given by Dr. Sue Hough of the USGS Pasadena Office.

You know that you live in Earthquake Country, but are you really aware of your faults? Do you know where they are, and how they have shaped the landscape? Do you know where the 1971 Sylmar earthquake left fault breaks at the surface, and where evidence of this earthquake can still be seen today? Come take a visual tour of some of Los Angeles' more conspicuous faults... More

This Sunday and Monday nights, NBC will broadcast "10.5," a two-part miniseries about a series of unrealistic earthquakes, culminating in an earthquake that separates a portion of southern California from the mainland.

While the miniseries contains many of the myths that we have worked to dispel, the attention creates an educational opportunity.

The web pages include:

• links to official comments from state and federal organizations
• a list of many of the errors in the miniseries and why they are wrong
• earthquake preparedness information, lesson plans, and more!

SCEC offers two summer internship programs, SCEC/SURE, and SCEC/USEIT. The SCEC Summer Undergraduate Research Experience (SCEC/SURE) pairs students one-on-one with SCEC scientists to work on a research project. The SCEC Undergraduate Summer in Earthquake Information Technology (SCEC/USEIT) is a team-based program at the University of Southern California (USC)... More

On Thursday March 18th at 8:00 PM the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pasadena Office will continue their free Public Lectures series. The presentation, entitled "Earthquake Conversations" will be given by USGS scientist Dr. Ross Stein...

On Thursday March 18th at 8:00 PM the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Pasadena Office will continue their free Public Lectures series. The presentation, entitled "Earthquake Conversations" will be given by USGS scientist Dr. Ross Stein.

For decades, we dreamed of being able to divine the time and place of the world's next disastrous shock. But by the early 1980s most of us concluded that the planet's largest tremors are isolated, random and utterly unpredictable. Once a major earthquake and its aftershocks do their damage, the fault will remain quiet until stresses in the earth's crust have time to rebuild, and the earthquake will have little effect on other faults. But a new hypothesis, termed earthquake stress triggering, is beginning to overturn that assumption... More