The quake, with a magnitude of 6.4, was centered near Ridgecrest, a community west of the Mojave Desert and about 150 miles north of Los Angeles.
At least 159 aftershocks of magnitude 2.5 or greater were recorded after the earthquake, according to USGS Seismologist Robert Graves. It is a higher than normal number, but not unprecedented, he said. The largest of them were magnitude 4.6.
Jones said there is a 1 in 20 chance that a bigger earthquake will hit within the next few days. “It’s certain that this area is going to be shaking a lot today and some of those aftershocks will probably exceed magnitude 5.”Ridgecrest has announced a state of emergency, Mayor Peggy Breeden said. As the mayor spoke to CNN earlier in the day, an aftershockinterrupted the interview.
“As I understand, we have five fires,” the mayor said. “We have broken gas lines.”
Footage from Ridgecrest showed firefighters hosing down flames rising from homes.
There were also power outages in the city of 28,000 residents. The forecasted high temperature is 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the National Weather Service said.
In Kern County, at the epicenter, the Fire Department responded to more than 20 incidents relating to the earthquake and aftershocks, including fires and medical emergencies, according to a tweet on its verified account.
Ridgecrest Regional Hospital was evacuated. About 15 patients from the emergency room were taken to another hospital, and inspectors were going through the facility to determine whether it was safe to bring the other patients in from the tented areas outside.
April Rodriguez was at home in Trona when she felt a smaller quake followed by a larger one “that didn’t stop,” she told CNN.
“We were panicked trying to get out of the house because everything is falling out of the cabinets, off the shelves, off the walls. … They were flying like missiles off the shelves.”
Kimberly Washburn was directing a children’s July Fourth program in Ridgecrest when the earthquake shook the building, starling the 65 children on stage
With their parents in the auditorium seats, the kids began screaming.
“It was terrifying,” she said.
One boy was injured when something fell on his foot, but Washburn said they were blessed that more weren’t hurt. After they evacuated, a wall fell behind where the children had been performing, she said.
In LA the ground rolled
In Los Angeles, the main temblor was felt as a long, rolling quake, and buildings rocked back and forth. Many in the city noted how much longer this earthquake felt than most.
Filmmaker Ava DuVernay tweeted, “Been living in Los Angeles all my life. That was the longest earthquake I’ve ever experienced. Not jerky. Smooth and rolling. But it was loooong. It was so long I thought for the first time ever, ‘Is this the big one?’ Damn. Respect Mother Nature. She’s the boss.”
Many residents were upset because the city’s one-of-a-kind smartphone app didn’t send a warning in advance. Afterward, city authorities said they would change the parameters on the application to issue alerts for smaller quakes.
The rolling ground also caused Disneyland officials to temporarily shut down rides.
The National Weather Service tweeted that the earthquake was also felt in Las Vegas.
“I was actually sitting at the blackjack table at the Wynn and it just felt like I was on a boat,” Alec Ventresca told CNN affiliate KLAS. “I actually thought the guy that I was sitting with was kicking the table.”
It was the largest quake to hit Southern California since 1999, when a 7.1 earthquake struck in a remote part of the Mojave desert.
In 1994, at least 57 people died when a 6.7 earthquake hit the Northridgeneighborhood of Los Angeles, causing $25 billion in damage.
Other reports of damage
Diane Ruggiero, general manager of the Hampton Inn and Suites Ridgecrest in Ridgecrest, said the hotel sustained significant damage.
“The chandeliers are still swinging,” she said five minutes after the quake hit at 10:33 a.m. PT. “The floor rippled.”
A woman on Twitter shared video from her father’s liquor store in Ridgecrest, showing shattered bottles and pools of spilled liquid covering the floor.
Trona, an unincorporated community, “sustained varying degrees of damage” but no injuries have been reported, according to San Bernardino County Fire’s verified Twitter account.
The department reported “minor cracks (in buildings); broken water mains; power lines down; rock slides on certain roads” in northwestern communities in the county.
Dorothea Smith said boulders fell down hillsides, shattering the asphalt and blocking mountain roads.
“There is no going in or out of Trona right now. We’re like stuck.”
A 4-inch crack opened up in Highway 178, according to San Bernardino County Fire spokesman Jeremy Kern.
All highways in San Bernardino County remain open, and the area’s high tension power lines are all intact.
Southern California was rocked by its largest earthquake in two decades on Thursday, but the 6.4-magnitude tremblor caused only “minor” injuries.
The shallow quake, which was followed by dozens of aftershocks, struck in a sparsely populated portion of the Mojave Desert, 10km from the city of Ridgecrest at 10.33am (1.30am Malaysia).
It was felt 257km away in Los Angeles and even as far afield as Las Vegas in the neighboring state of Nevada, as the United States celebrated its July 4 Independence Day holiday.
Although the quake in the most populous US state of California revived fears of the “Big One” – a powerful tremblor along the San Andreas Fault that could devastate major cities in Southern California – President Trump was quick to reassure that this wasn’t it.
“All seems to be very much under control!” he tweeted two hours after the quake in the Searles Valley of San Bernardino County.
California Institute of Technology seismologist Lucy Jones told a press conference that residents “will continue having a lot of aftershocks,“ some maybe as strong as magnitude five.
The quake was the largest in Southern California since 1999 when a 7.1-magnitude quake struck the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, according to The Los Angeles Times.
David Witt, the fire chief in Kern County which includes Ridgecrest, reported “minor, minor injuries,“ stemming from broken glass and shelves falling down in supermarkets.
He was not able to provide an exact number of casualties.
Peggy Breeden, mayor of Ridgecrest which has a population of 28,000, said the local hospital had been evacuated as a precaution, and that she had received reports of a handful of house fires.
Some areas of the city had lost power, while gas had been cut due to ruptured lines, she said.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department, meanwhile, said that “buildings and roads have sustained varying degrees of damage”.
This included “buildings with minor cracks, broken water mains, power lines down, rock slides on certain roads.”
The quake struck at a depth of 10km in the vast desert region, lasting seconds.
Its epicentre was located in or on the edge of the US Navy’s sprawling desert bomb testing range known as China Lake.
The Naval Air Weapons Station covers 445,000ha and strictly controls the airspace above it. Inside, the Navy develops and tests missiles, bombs, artillery shells and other war ordnance, and the aircraft used to deliver it.
An official at China Lake said there was “substantial damage” to their facilities, including fires, water leaks and spills of hazardous materials.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said there was no significant damage there, while the city’s international airport said its runways were unharmed, with operations continuing as normal.
‘Even bigger earthquake’
Jones said there is a small possibility this quake is the prelude to a larger one.
“There is about a one-in-20 chance that this location will be having an even bigger earthquake within the next few days, that we have not yet seen the biggest earthquake of the sequence,“ she said.
“There have been hundreds of earthquakes today,“ she said, including more than 100 that the United States Geological Survey measured at greater than magnitude 2.5.
For filmmaker Ava DuVernay, a lifelong resident of Los Angles, “That was the longest earthquake I’ve ever experienced. Not jerky. Smooth and rolling. But it was loooong.”
