The Morgan Hill Earthquake of April 24, 1984—The 1.29g Acceleration at Coyote Lake Dam: Due to Directivity, a Double Event, or Both?

Abstract

The 1984 Halls Valley (Morgan Hill, California) earthquake had a complex seismic source. Velocities of the major seismic phases measured from continuous broadband seismograms at Berkeley Seismographic Station (BKS) and Richmond Field Station (RFS) show unambiguously that the earthquake is predominantly a double event with the second source hypocenter located approximately 17 km southeast of the mainshock hypocenter given by Bolt, Uhrhammer and Darragh (1985). The southeasterly fault rupture of the first source and the location of the focus of the second source have critical implications for the observed spatial variation of the recorded accelerograms. Of particular engineering interest, the high frequency 1.29g pulse of horizontal ground acceleration measured at Coyote Lake dam can be explained primarily as due to the second source and constructive interference of the principal S waves from the two sources.