Malibu, California, which was burned by the Franklin Fire in December and the Palisades Fire in January, suffered a 4.1-magnitude earthquake on Sunday — and is apparently facing a series of similar small earthquakes in the future.
The Los Angeles Times reported:
Sunday’s magnitude 4.1 earthquake near Malibu is part of a larger seismic pattern being seen in Southern California.
The region has been experiencing a number of moderate earthquakes since 2024. In all of 2024, Southern California experienced 15 seismic sequences with at least one magnitude-4 or higher earthquake, according to a count by seismologist Lucy Jones, a Caltech research associate. That’s the highest annual total in the last 65 years, surpassing the 13 seen in 1988.
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The Malibu area has seen three quakes larger than magnitude 4 in the last 13 months.
Earthquakes are notoriously difficult to predict, and there is no sense of when the next major earthquake might hit the region. Still, the tremor on Sunday rattled nerves in a region already shattered by the recent wildfires.
In 2018, the area was also devastated by the Woolsey Fire, which swept through parts of Malibu and the Santa Monica Mountains.
The area is known for being home to many Hollywood celebrities, but it is also prone to fires, given the lengthy dry summer season, and intense rains in winter that provide enough water for rapid brush growth.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
