The Western Nevada area has the highest earthquake hazard in the state. The area has the largest earthquake faults, some of the highest levels of recorded earthquake activity, and the highest slip-rates and geodetically measured deformation in the state, all indicating the high earthquake hazard. Major earthquakes occurred in Western Nevada in 1857, 1860, 1869 (two events), 1887, 1914 (two events), 1948, and 1966. The most recent damaging earthquakes occurred in 1994 (south of Gardnerville) and in 2008 (western Reno).

Earthquakes in Western Nevada are caused by the extension that is pulling Nevada apart and wrenching created as the Sierra Nevada is pulled to the north because it is caught up in the Pacific-North America plate motion. The extension creates normal faults such as the Genoa fault, which bounds Carson Valley, the Mt. Rose fault, which bounds Reno, and the basin-bounding faults in the Tahoe basin, including the West Tahoe—Dollar Point fault. When an earthquake occurs on a normal fault, the ground is offset vertically, with one side dropping down and the other side going up. The wrenching creates strike-slip faults that have horizontal movement, such as the over 50-mile-long Warm Springs Valley fault system, north of Reno.

The chance of having a damaging, magnitude 6 earthquake within 30 miles of any location in the Reno-Carson City-Tahoe urban corridor over the next 50 years ranges between 60% and 75%. This high likelihood of an event is not surprising because earthquake damage in the urban corridor has occurred over 10 times since the 1850s. People in the Western Nevada area need to be prepared for earthquakes.

Additional earthquake hazard information:

Earthquake History of Nevada. Carson Weather.

Earthquake Shaking Potential Map. Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology.

Nevada Earthquake History. United States Geological Survey.