Rattled nerves in valley but no major damage

Though there was no major damage in Las Vegas after a shaky Friday night, residents were rattled by shifting floors and swaying chandeliers.

The 7.1-magnitude earthquake reported at 8:19 p.m. more than 200 miles southwest of the Las Vegas Valley had effects that rippled in Las Vegas throughout the evening.

On the strip, the World Series of Poker came to a stop, and Le Reve at Wynn Las Vegas was evacuated. The show had less than 5 minutes left and the following show began on schedule.

Visitors at First Friday watched the ground move while people “brace(d) themselves on tables,” the Review-Journal reported at the time.

No planes were delayed at McCarran International Airport, and the runways suffered no damage.

Meanwhile in Southern California, a 30-mile stretch of state Route 178 extending from Ridgecrest to Trona was closed after the road opened up, leaving a crack that extended across the pavement and into the dirt on both sides of the highway.

But Nevada Department of Transportation spokesman Tony Illia on Friday assured residents of Las Vegas that bridges here were made to hold up against earthquakes.

“We completed 160 hours of bridge inspections with two teams of engineers examining 55 bridges throughout Clark and Lincoln counties,” he said Friday about the earthquake in Caliente in 2015. “Inspectors looked for quake-related delaminations, cracks, misaligned bridge members, displacement and settlement, among other things. Happily, every bridge inspected was found to be structurally sound and safe for public travel.”

On less stable ground, officials for Caesars Entertainment Corp. were forced Friday night to suspend operations temporarily on the 550-foot-tall High Roller observation wheel.

It was unclear how long the the High Roller was closed, but spokesman Richard Broome assured that “it was short.”

On the mind of many residents Friday night, the under-construction Las Vegas Stadium did not see any injuries or suffer any damage.

Don Webb, chief operating officer of the Raiders’ subsidiary building the 65,000-seat, $1.8 billion project at Russell Road and Interstate 15, told the Review-Journal that the structure was “thoroughly inspected” Saturday by an independent testing firm, engineers and the project management team.

“Last night, in an abundance of caution, crews came down from the high structures and continued to work on assembling roof trusses on the ground,” Webb said Saturday.

The project management team is reinforcing the need to be vigilant, he said, as “there’s clearly no notice when an event like this is going to occur.”

In another exercise of caution, basketball games in Las Vegas were delayed or postponed, including the Vegas Summer League game between the New Orleans Pelicans and the New York Knicks at the Thomas & Mack Center. The Denver Nuggets-Phoenix Suns game was postponed after the scoreboard that hangs over the court began to sway.

“We’ve tried to prepare for everything that we can, any natural occurrence that we can control,” Summer League Executive Director Warren LeGarie told the Review-Journal on Friday. “But some things are literally out of (our) control. There’s always a clause in every contract — act of God. We experienced it tonight.”