California towns survey quake damage amid more aftershocks
LOS ANGELES >> Communities in the Mojave Desert tallied damage and made emergency repairs to cracked roads and broken pipes Friday as aftershocks from Southern California’s largest earthquake in 20 years kept rumbling.
The small town of Ridgecrest, close to the epicenter, assessed damage after several fires and multiple injuries that were blamed on the magnitude 6.4 quake. A shelter drew 28 people overnight, but not all of them slept inside amid the shaking.
“Some people slept outside in tents because they were so nervous,” said Marium Mohiuddin of the American Red Cross.
Damage appeared limited to desert areas, although the quake was felt widely, including in the Los Angeles region 150 miles (240 kilometers) away. The largest aftershock thus far — magnitude 5.4 — was also felt in LA before dawn Friday.
Ridgecrest Regional Hospital remained closed as state inspectors assessed it, spokeswoman Jayde Glenn said. The hospital’s own review found no structural damage, but there were cracks in walls, broken water pipes and water damage.
The hospital was prepared to help women in labor and to give triage care to emergency patients, Fifteen patients were evacuated to other hospitals after the quake, Glenn said.
The quake did not appear to have caused major damage to roads and bridges in the area, but it did open three cracks across a short stretch of State Route 178 near the tiny town of Trona, said California Department of Transportation District Nine spokeswoman Christine Knadler.
Those cracks were temporarily sealed, but engineers were investigating whether the two-lane highway was damaged beneath the cracks, Knadler said. Bridges in the area were also being checked.
The Ridgecrest library was closed as volunteers and staff picked up hundreds of books that fell off shelves. The building’s cinderblock walls also had some cracks, said Charissa Wagner, library branch supervisor.
Wagner was at her home in the small city of 29,000 people when a small foreshock hit, followed by the large one, putting her and her 11-year-old daughter on edge.
“The little one was like, ‘Oh what just happened.’ The big one came later and that was scarier,” she said.
The nearby Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake said in a statement late Thursday that no injuries were reported and so far all buildings had been found to be intact, but assessments continued across its vast acreage. Its workforce was ordered to not report on Friday.
The earthquake knocked over a boulder that sat atop one of the rock spires at the Trona Pinnacles outside of Ridgecrest, a collection of towering rock formations that has been featured in commercials and films, said Martha Maciel, a Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman in California.