Earthquake rattles Los Angeles

[Brendon Webb]

Earthquake rattles Los Angeles
A moderate, magnitude 5.4 earthquake struck just east of Los Angeles, the U.S. Geological Survey says. The quake's epicenter was about 2 miles southwest of Chino Hills and 5 miles southeast of Diamond Bar. Residents were warned to check their homes for gas and water leaks, and to be on alert for more aftershocks.

[Brendon Webb]

Earthquake rocks Los Angeles
Story Highlights
NEW: U.S. Geological Survey downgrades quake to 5.4 magnitude

11:42 a.m. PT's epicenter was about 32 miles east of Los Angeles

USGS: Center of the earthquake was about 7.6 miles deep

Next Article in U.S. »


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LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- A magnitude-5.4 earthquake has struck just east of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.



Los Angeles was hit by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake Tuesday.

 The quake's epicenter was about 2 miles southwest of Chino Hills and about 5 miles southeast of Diamond Bar, the USGS said. Chino Hills is about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.

The center was about 7.6 miles deep. In general, earthquakes centered closer to the Earth's surface produce stronger shaking and can cause more damage than those further underground.

A 5.8 magnitude quake is considered by the USGS to be "moderate," which can cause slight damage to buildings and others structures. About 500 can happen globally each year, the survey says.

According to the USGS archives, it's the biggest California earthquake since September 28, 2004, when a 6.0 quake was recorded south of Parkfield, which is about 70 miles northwest of Bakersfield.

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"It's too early to tell if there's any major damage but all units are checking overpasses, bridges and tall buildings," Anaheim Police Sgt. Ken Seymour told The Los Angeles Times.

"I can tell you that we had a good-sized shake here in the bureau," said CNN Los Angeles Bureau Chief Pete Janos. "It started slowly. It continued on, shaking the bureau pretty well. ... Right now we're just sort of assessing the situation. Nothing fell off the walls ... but there definitely was a shake."

Janos said he has lived in southern California for about 12 years. "I can tell you this is probably the best one we have had," he said.

He said the quake "picked up steam. At its height, the building was doing some good swaying back and forth." He estimated the quake lasted no longer than about 20 seconds.

"We could definitely feel it on the third floor," said Kara Finnstrom, who was in Hollywood. "That feeling where you scramble to get under something because you know it's large enough -- you wonder what's going to happen next."

A 5.8 magnitude quake is considered by the USGS to be "moderate," which can cause slight damage to buildings and others structures. About 500 can happen globally each year, the survey says.

CNN's Ed Lavandera was at Disneyland in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles, with his family and felt the tremor. He said the shaking lasted about 5 seconds.  Watch a reporter describe the shaking at Disneyland »

CNN affiliate KABC is reporting that Disneyland's rides have been evacuated.

Lavandera was standing in line for a ride when he saw the ride's top "shaking back and forth."

You could hear the metal kind of clanging around, and the ride was just ending, so for a moment ... I thought maybe something was wrong with the ride. Then I realized the ride had already stopped moving and the ground was still moving," he said. Did you feel the quake?

iReporter Danny Casler, 28, of Huntington Beach, California, was woken by the earthquake. He had his wisdom teeth removed last week and was at home recuperating from the surgery.

"Everything in the house was shifting back and forth," he said.

Casler said he ran outside, where other neighbors had gathered. "My house was like a fun house," he said. "Everything was moving."

There were no immediate reports of injury or damage in Los Angeles, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey told The Associated Press. San Bernardino County fire dispatch did not have reports of damage, AP said.

The quake was predicted to occur, according a study sponsored by the USGS published in Science Daily in April. The study had predicted there was a 99 percent chance of California having a magnitude 6.7 of larger within the next 30 years.


Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.

[Brendon Webb]

Earthquake Rocks
Southern California

[Brendon Webb]

LOS ANGELES — A strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, causing buildings to sway and triggering some precautionary evacuations. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

The jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas.

The 11:42 a.m. quake was initially estimated at 5.8 by the U.S. Geological Survey but was revised downward to 5.4. More than a dozen aftershocks quickly followed, the largest estimated at magnitude-3.8.

The quake was centered 29 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles near the San Bernardino County city of Chino Hills, and was estimated to be about 8 miles below the earth's surface.

"It will certainly cause cracked plaster and broken windows, but probably not structural damage," USGS seismologist Kate Hutton said.

The magnitude-5.9 Whittier Narrows quake in 1987 was the last big shake in that area. That quake heavily damaged older buildings and houses in communities east of Los Angeles.

The Governor's Office of Emergency Services had received no damage or injury reports, said spokesman Kelly Huston in Sacramento.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles. San Bernardino and San Diego counties also had no immediate reports of damage.

Buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles for several seconds.

Workers quickly evacuated some office buildings.

"It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while," said Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, who was in the sheriff's suburban Monterey Park headquarters east of Los Angeles.

As strongly as it was felt, the quake was far less powerful than the magnitude-6.7 Northridge earthquake that badly damaged the region on Jan. 17, 1994. That quake was the last damaging temblor in Southern California. It killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage in the metropolitan area.

No electrical outages were reported in Los Angeles due to the quake, said Department of Water and Power spokeswoman Kim Hughes.

In Orange County, about 2000 detectives were attending a conference on gangs at a Marriott hotel in Anaheim when a violent jolt shook the main conference room.

Mike Willever, who was at the hotel, said, "First we heard the ceiling shaking, then the chandelier started to shake, then there was a sudden movement of the floor."

Chris Watkins, from San Diego, said he previously felt several earthquakes, but "that was one of the worst ones."

Delegates and guests at a cluster of hotels near the Disneyland resort spilled into the streets immediately after the quake.

Huston, the governor's OES spokesman, said officials in Sacramento were on a conference call when the earthquake struck, discussing the availability of firefighting equipment with a Southern California emergency management team.

"They felt it. We could actually hear some shaking on the phone. Now we've completely shifted gears _ we're on earthquakes," Huston said.

Joseph Maddalena, who runs the historical documents and memorabilia dealer Profiles in History, was on the phone in his office in Calabasas, near Malibu, when the earthquake struck. He quickly put down the phone and ran to check on his 14-year-old son who had come to work with him as he prepared for a Thursday auction of 1,100 pieces of Hollywood movie memorabilia.

"Our building shook pretty good," he said after discovering his son and his employees were unharmed and the building was fine.

"The window in my office kind of bowed out but it's all right now. Everything is fine," he said.

The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A 7.1 quake _ much stronger than Northridge _ hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused only a few injuries and no deaths.

California is one of the world's most seismically active regions. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.

___

Associated Press Writers Thomas Watkins, John Rogers, Don Thompson, Gillian Flaccus and Alicia Chang contributed to this report.

[Brendon Webb]

People wait outside a downtown Los Angeles after evacuating following an earthquake Tuesday, July 29, 2008. Preliminary information from the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake at magnitude 5.8, centered 29 miles east-southeast of downtown Los Angeles near Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. No immediate damage was reported. The jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas.(AP Photo/Kim Johnson Flodin)

[Monique Faulkner]

Tougher codes kept quake damage down

Story Highlights
NEW: Quake hit in area with structures built with lessons learned from '94 quake

Few reports of damage or injury from magnitude 5.4 earthquake

Experts, officials say earthquake a wake-up call to be prepared

Rattled residents report swinging doors, "really strong jolt"


     
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- One reason the California earthquake caused only minor damage was new, tough building codes enacted since the deadly Northridge quake in 1994, according to an expert with the U.S. Geological Survey.




AutoZone manager Daniel Sanchez cleans up after the earthquake in Diamond Bar, California, on Tuesday.

 1 of 3 more photos »  Tuesday's quake "was located in an area that's been almost completely built since about 1995," seismologist Lucy Jones told CNN. "We had major changes in the building codes because of what we learned in Northridge. And the most modern construction is really much, much better to withstand earthquakes than earlier buildings. There weren't many older buildings nearby."

The magnitude 5.4 earthquake in metropolitan Los Angeles, California, caused no serious damage or injuries, but experts say it's a reminder that the "Big One" could happen at any time.

"This earthquake reminds us to be prepared," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said. "We were very fortunate that there were no serious injuries or property damage."

California has a 99 percent chance of experiencing a major earthquake within the next 30 years, according to a report by state and federal agencies.

The Los Angeles quake "is a sample, a small sample," said Kate Hutton, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology.  Watch 'Judge Judy' taping rocked by quake »

Hutton said there is a 5 percent chance the quake could be a precursor to a larger earthquake. After 24 hours, she said, that chance will drop to 1 percent.

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"Every earthquake relieves some stress," Hutton said. "It's usually only a drop in the ocean. In other words, the amount of stress released by this earthquake is minuscule compared to the amount that's built up and is building up for the Big One when it happens some day in the future."

And when will that be?

"From a geologist's point of view, the answer has to be soon," she said. "But geologists are used to thinking on millions of years and thousands of years time scale, so I don't think that gives any useful information for people, except be prepared at any time because it could happen at any time."

A magnitude 5.4 quake shook northern California in April. A magnitude 4.4 struck the greater Los Angeles area in August 2007.

There is a 99 percent chance of California experiencing a quake of magnitude 6.7 or more within the next 30 years, according to the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast, sponsored by the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center in a report published in Science Daily in April.

Schwarzenegger said he believes the state is "as prepared as anyone can be. We have continuous discussions about that. We are fanatics about emergencies and to be ready."

The largest earthquake in recent years in California was a magnitude 7.1 in 1999, Hutton said. But it was centered in the desert, near Twentynine Palms, in a sparsely populated area.

Tuesday's quake struck about 11:42 a.m., according to the USGS. Its epicenter was about 2 miles southwest of Chino Hills and about 5 miles southeast of Diamond Bar.

More than 30 aftershocks were recorded. Hutton said the largest was a magnitude 3.6.

Los Angeles police said a downtown hotel sustained some structural damage, but no one was injured and the building was not evacuated. There were some unconfirmed reports of minor injuries.

Despite the absence of serious damage or injuries, some Los Angeles-area residents were left rattled. The quake was felt as far south as San Diego, and the USGS said it received reports of light shaking as far north as Rosamond, California, about 55 miles north-northeast of Los Angeles.

Reports from those who felt the quake poured into CNN.

"My house was like a fun house. Everything was moving," said Danny Casler, 28, of Huntington Beach. He said he was sleeping when his house began shaking, and some things fell in the living room. He ran out of the house in his boxer shorts.

Lawyer Kevin Crisp said he was on the phone with his partner, who burst out, "Big quake!" Crisp said he felt it about five seconds later. "This was very impressive. Long and very uniform. Really had the building going." He said doors were swinging on the hinges and bottles of wine were rolling back and forth on his shelf.

"It just started with a really strong jolt," Wendy Criner said. "I ran and got my daughters from different rooms, and we squatted in the living room. I did have stuff fall off the shelf, some books in my daughters' room and some things in the kitchen."

The quake knocked out a ground radar system at Los Angeles International Airport, but that did not interfere with operations, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Tiles fell from the ceiling in one terminal as water flowed from a burst pipe.

The calculation of the quake's magnitude fluctuated as seismologists reviewed the data. Initially classified as a magnitude 5.8, the quake's intensity was reduced to a 5.6 and then to a 5.4. Because the earthquake magnitude scale is exponential, a 5.8 magnitude quake is four to five times more intense than a 5.4.

Two nuclear plants are in the vicinity of the quake's epicenter near Chino Hills, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The closest to the epicenter is in San Onofre, 50 miles south, but an NRC spokesman said, "this is well below the threshold for any conceivable damage to the plants."

Still, the quake jolted the nerves of many Californians.

"I've lived in California, I've lived through several of them," Margot Wagner of Santa Barbara told CNN. "It's always a little unnerving."
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Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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