Utah is overdue for a big earthquake. Are we prepared?
Mar 18, 2025, 8:32 AM | Updated: 8:58 am
Fourth graders Jose Gonzalez, Austin Russ and Aaliyah Genao practice taking cover under their desks for an earthquake drill at Heartland Elementary School in West Jordan on April 18, 2024. It's the five-year anniversary of the 2020 Magna earthquake. (Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)
(Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — The five-year anniversary of the earthquake that hit Magna, other parts of Salt Lake County and reverberated around much of the state is Tuesday.
The 5.7 magnitude earthquake caused extensive damage to buildings in Magna and at a trailer park elsewhere in the county.
Related: How an earthquake impacts homes and buildings
Thankfully, no one was seriously injured — COVID-19 had kids out of school — but the shaker exposed the vulnerabilities of out-of-date masonry structures, aging aqueducts and personal preparedness — or the lack of it.
Envision Utah took a hard look at people’s sentiments ahead of the five-year anniversary and detailed some interesting findings:
- Utahns are more concerned about the immediate, short-term effects of an earthquake rather than long-term damage to the economy or infrastructure.
- Many Utahns place a significant amount of responsibility on state and local governments to prepare the state for a major earthquake — and feel that more action is needed.
- Utahns view a major earthquake as a life-altering event with widespread destruction.
Although the “big one” is long overdue and likely to hit within the next 50 years, the occurrence of such a catastrophic event does not rise to the top level of people’s concerns.
Instead, an economic crash came first, followed by political unrest and a cyberattack. Earthquakes came next and are the top natural disaster people are worried about; then came wildfires, climate change and severe winter storms. Curiously, even mass shootings outranked concerns over flooding — which may be the result of Utah’s protracted drought.
Paul Foster, a server at Caffé Molise, shovels debris that fell from the building in Salt Lake City after a 5.7 magnitude earthquake centered in Magna hit early March 18, 2020. (Photo: Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)
The consequences of the ‘big one’
Federal Emergency Management Agency modeling predicts more than 3,000 deaths, 9,300 people critically injured and 84,400 displaced households if a 7.0 magnitude earthquake were to hit Salt Lake County.
More than 57,000 buildings in Salt Lake County would be extremely damaged or unsafe to enter, and more than 300,000 households would be without potable water for 90 days.
State emergency management officials said such an event would likely be the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history, but are people taking it seriously?
Dr. Keith Koper, director of University of Utah Seismograph Stations, shows an earthquake pattern from a seismometer in Salt Lake City on Jan. 28, 2022. (Photo: Mengshin Lin, Deseret News)
This most recent probe by Envision Utah shows while people strongly disagree that an earthquake won’t be as bad as expected (67%), it also noted that 50% of those surveyed say they have too many things on their mind or other pressing concerns to worry about an earthquake.
“We expected people might be a little skeptical about the seriousness of an earthquake. We thought people might assume it’s not actually going to happen or that it’s not actually going to be that bad,” said Jason Brown, vice president of education and communications for Envision Utah.
“But what we saw is that Utahns definitely are worried about a major earthquake. They just don’t feel like they have the time or the energy to do everything it takes to be fully prepared — or to do things that require the community, like upgrading infrastructure.”
Some Utah residents, according to the survey, said they believe communities will pull together to lessen an earthquake’s impacts and agencies would step in.
Here are some examples:
- “Honestly, I think it would be OK. Community members would come together; it wouldn’t be too bad.”
- “It depends, but short-term, I would expect there would be help from people — people helping their neighbors, people from outside coming in to help. Long-term would have to rebuild infrastructure and housing, the economy. A lot of rebuilding would have to happen.”
- “I think that most areas, as far as government and emergency services, are pretty prepared. I think they would be overwhelmed. Hospitals maybe less prepared. I think that most of them will probably be hopeful. I think the outcome would be short-term. I think that it would be handled very well.”
“It’s certainly not a huge group of people who think we’ll be OK after a major earthquake. But I think that’s probably coming from experiences that a lot of us have had when there’s a big storm and neighbors come together to help neighbors,” Brown said.
“It feels good to have that sense of community. The problem is that this is not on the same scale at all. The devastation we’ll see after a major earthquake is probably much closer to the devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” Brown added.
The survey took place last summer, involving 812 residents who live in or around the Wasatch Front.
