Presenter: Dr. Cassie Hanagan (USGS Earthquake Science Center)
On June 24th, 2026 magnitude 7.2 and 7.5 earthquakes struck northern Venezuela along the right-lateral Boconó and San Sebastián faults. Intense shaking and damage >200 km to the east of the epicentral region and preliminary subsurface slip models indicate 70% of the ~215-km-long rupture went offshore, complicating initial estimates of fault slip at the surface. In this talk, I will present observations of deformation from the earthquakes at the few locations where the fault crosses onshore. Distributed fault displacements with minimal surface rupture suggest a spectrum of recoverable elastic and permanent inelastic processes that emphasize the importance of characterizing near-surface fault strain and material properties to understand fault displacement hazard.