Southern California left shaken by strongest quake to hit in 20 years
LOS ANGELES — A strong earthquake rattled a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada on Thursday, fraying nerves on the July Fourth holiday and causing some damage in a town near the epicenter amid a swarm of ongoing aftershocks.
The 6.4 magnitude quake struck at 10:33 a.m. in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles, near the town of Ridgecrest, Calif. It is the strongest quake to hit the region in 20 years.
Peggy Breeden, the mayor of Ridgecrest, a town of 28,000 people, said firefighters were working to put out five fires, at least one of them at a home, but that she didn’t know if any injuries had been reported.
Utility workers were assessing broken gas lines and turning off gas where necessary, Breeden told CNN.
President Donald Trump said he was fully briefed on the earthquake and that it “all seems to be very much under control!”
A series of aftershocks included a 4.5 magnitude temblor, according to the United States Geological Survey.
“It almost gave me a heart attack,” said Cora Burke, a waitress at Midway Cafe in Ridgecrest, of the big jolt. “It’s just a rolling feeling inside the building, inside the cafe and all of a sudden everything started falling off the shelf, glasses, the refrigerator and everything in the small refrigerator fell over.”
Video posted online of a liquor store in Ridgecrest showed the aisles filled with broken wine and liquor bottles, knocked down boxes and other groceries strewn on the floor. Flames were seen shooting out of one home in the community.
Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the California Institute of Technology’s seismology lab, said the earthquake was the strongest since a 7.1 quake struck in the area on October 16, 1999.
Jones said that the 6.4 quake centered near the town of Ridgecrest was preceded by a magnitude 4.2 temblor about a half hour earlier.
She said vigorous aftershocks were occurring and that she wouldn’t be surprised if a magnitude 5 quake hit but that they were striking in a remote area, sparsely populated area. “This is an isolated enough location that that’s going to greatly reduce the damage,” she said.