A magnitude 4.4 earthquake shook Pahranagat National Wildlife Refuge on Wednesday morning, rattling a stretch of southern Nevada just 17 miles southwest of Alamo and sending shaking as far as Las Vegas. The quake struck shortly after 8 a.m. local time, and a magnitude 3.2 aftershock was recorded in almost the exact same location about 30 minutes later.
There was no word on the extent of any damage. But the shaking added to an active run of seismic activity in the region, where dozens of earthquakes have been recorded in the past few weeks.
The Nevada quake comes less than three weeks after a powerful magnitude 5.5 earthquake rattled western Nevada and northern California on April 13, with multiple aftershocks ranging from magnitude 2.5 to 3.6. That event reached an estimated Mercalli intensity of VI, strong enough to move some heavy furniture and leave reports of fallen plaster and minor damage.
Nevada sits in earthquake country because the land is actively extending in a northwest-southeast direction, a force that leaves the Basin and Range province riddled with active faults and makes it one of the most seismically active regions in the United States. Nevada and California have seen many large earthquakes over the last 150 years, and the state’s biggest on record was a magnitude 7.6 quake on Oct. 3, 1915.
For now, the question is not whether the region can shake again. It already has. The question is how much more this cluster will test communities from rural Clark County to Las Vegas before the ground settles down.
