Fear on the Fourth
6.4 magnitude quake the strongest to rattle Southern California in years
RIDGECREST, Calif. — The largest earthquake in two decades rattled Southern California on Thursday morning, shaking communities from Las Vegas to Long Beach and ending a quiet period in the state’s seismic history.
Striking at 10:33 a.m. PDT, the magnitude 6.4 temblor was centered about 125 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the remote and sparsely populated Searles Valley area of Kern County.
Authorities said there were no immediate reports of deaths, serious injuries or major infrastructure damage, though emergency responders were still inspecting areas around the city of Ridgecrest.
Patients at Ridgecrest Regional Hospital were evacuated “out of an abundance of caution,” hospital Chief Executive James Suver said. About 20 patients were transferred to other facilities while seismic engineers inspected broken pipes in the facility.
Ridgecrest, a community of about 29,000, was inundated with offers of help, from neighboring towns, California politicians such as Rep. Kevin Mccarthy and Sen. Kamala Harris and even the White House, Mayor Peggy Breeden said.
“With all this cooperation … we expect we will be able to move on,” Breeden said.
By late afternoon, more than 87 aftershocks had been recorded, including three that registered above magnitude 4.5.
California Institute of Technology seismologist Lucy Jones expected the aftershocks to continue to rumble through Kern County.
“There is about a 1-in-20 chance that this location will be having an even bigger earthquake in the next few days, and that we have not yet seen the biggest earthquake of the sequence,” she said.
As it was, the quake was the largest with an epicenter in Southern California since the 7.1 Hector Mine quake struck the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base in 1999. The last earthquake felt as widely as Thursday’s was the magnitude 7.2 earthquake on Easter Sunday 2010 that had an epicenter in Baja California.
Before Thursday, it had been almost five years since the state experienced an earthquake of magnitude 6 or stronger.
The rocking in Searles Valley began with an initial quake of magnitude 4 at 10:02 a.m. Seven minutes later, a 2.5 temblor struck. About 22 minutes later, a prolonged shaking began about five miles underground.
The quake hit as children were putting on a Fourth of July performance at Burroughs High School in Ridgecrest, Vicki Siegel said.
“The kids were crying and scared ... but we all got out,” she said. “They probably all have PTSD now.”
In Los Angeles, residents said the quake had a rolling quality that lasted for more than a minute — long enough for many to pull out cellphones and document swinging chandeliers and sloshing swimming pools.