Magnitude 6.8 Earthquake Strikes East African Rift

A magnitude 6.8 earthquake stuck the Lake Tanganyika region along the East African Rift zone on December 5 at 2:19 PM local time. Moment tensor solutions for the earthquake show that it was a normal faulting earthquake along a roughly north to north-northwest striking faulting plane. The East African Rift zone lies along the failed rift arm of the Afar Triangle, or triple junction, along which the Arabian plate rifted from Africa. The US has a similar kind of failed rift arm that runs along the Mississippi river and the New Madrid fault zone, which is less seismically active, but which failed in a series of large earthquakes in 1811-1812 that rang church bells as far as Boston.