New Fault May Have Caused 2024 New Jersey Earthquake
New Jersey was rattled by a magnitude-4.8 earthquake in April 2024, and new research suggests it may have been caused by a previously unknown fault line.
The quake’s epicenter was in Hunterdon County, in a typically quiet area. For more than two years, the theory was that it was caused by the Ramapo Fault, but research led by Fola Kolawole, an associate professor at Columbia University, suggests that could not have been the case based on the epicenter’s location.
Kolawole and his team spent months studying seismic activity and found that a different fault, long undetected, was responsible. They named it the Mountainville Fault and describe it as immature, with a slow rate of stress buildup.
“It’s not a new fault geologically speaking, but it’s new to us now, we didn’t know about it,” Kolawole said.
Researchers hope to study the fault further to better understand when future seismic activity could occur. Kolawole stressed there is no reason for families in the area to panic, noting that the fault dates back more than 100 million years.
The discovery could help determine the “driving mechanism” that triggers earthquakes. Researchers do not believe it will lower home values and hope to secure more funding to determine when the fault last broke to the surface and what is causing it to move.
