Valley hit by first quake in 14 years

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 1998 | 11:26 a.m.

Last week it was snow in Las Vegas. This week it's earthquakes.

A temblor measuring 2.7 on the Richter scale shook residents early Monday afternoon, seismologists from both ends of the state confirmed. It was the first earthquake recorded from a fault in the Las Vegas Valley in 14 years.

Nevada is the third most active state for earthquakes, behind California and Alaska, though most recorded earthquakes have occurred in Northern Nevada.

At 1:41 p.m., northwest Las Vegas Valley residents felt a shock or a jolt, according to 911 calls that poured into the central emergency management center, said Bob Cullins, emergency management coordinator for the fire department.

Callers from The Lakes and the Summerlin area felt the quake, he said. No injuries or damages were reported.

The University of Nevada, Reno Seismic Laboratory recorded the quake at 2.7 magnitude about eight miles west of The Strip on an unknown fault, said seismologist Ken Smith.

"It was a very small earthquake," Smith said. "You have to be very close to feel anything."

However, some homes in the valley have been built on top of unmapped faults that have been filled in on the surface by grading and other improvements, Smith said. Residents living in such areas could have felt the quake, he said.

An aftershock registering less than 1.5 magnitude on the Richter scale followed the Las Vegas Valley rumbler near West Charleston Boulevard and Fort Apache.

Just a minute later, at 1:42 p.m., the seismograph at UNLV detected a 4.0 magnitude quake in northern Death Valley, said David Weide, professor of geoscience.

It's impossible to know whether the quake was felt in the Las Vegas area, because of the local quake that hit a minute earlier, but significant earthquakes in Death Valley often can be felt in Southern Nevada.

"There's a whole series of faults that run through the Mojave Desert there," Weide said of the earthquake that rattled the Nevada-California border about 200 miles south of Reno.

The 20 known faults in the Las Vegas Valley are not connected to Death Valley, said geologist Burt Slemmons, a retired University of Nevada, Reno, scientist.

The zone near West Charleston and Fort Apache contains a young fault, a minor wrinkle in the earth, spotted from an aerial photograph taken before new homes and golf courses were built over it, Slemmons said.

The most critical faults scientists pay attention to in Las Vegas include ones near Cashman Field, at Sunrise Mountain, along Decatur Boulevard, Valley View Boulevard, Whitney Mesa in the southeast valley and in the northwest valley along Lone Mountain Road and Cheyenne Avenue.

Other known faults run under McCarran International Airport runways, Strip hotels and the downtown area, Slemmons said.