A new methodology to automatically determine the earthquake source process and near-source strong ground motions using regional and local distance data was used to study the October 16, 1999 Hector Mine earthquake (Mw7.1). Broadband displacement data were inverted for the seismic moment tensor and to resolve the fault plane ambiguity independent of aftershock location and surface faulting information. The identified NNW striking fault plane was used to invert for the distribution of fault slip over a planar surface. The slip model was used to predict near-fault peak ground velocity, which was found to agree well with the TriNet ShakeMap, and also with near-fault observations that were not available at the time of the initial analysis. Our method if automated is capable of providing near-source strong ground motion information within 30 minutes of the earthquake origin time even in cases where there are few near-fault recording instruments. ¿ 2000 American Geophysical Union