Violent Earthquake Hits California

By Pamela Mortimer

At 11:42 A.M. PDT, an earthquake struck 29 miles south of Los Angeles in the Chino Hills area. The quake, which reached 5.8 on the Richter scale, swayed buildings in LA but no immediate damage was reported. The shock was felt as far away as San Diego and Las Vegas.

According to a statement from U.S. Geological Survey, preliminary findings show that the center of the quake was located in San Bernardino County. After the quake, there were approximately ten aftershocks, three of which were recorded at 3.8. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated the quake originated about 8 miles under the earth's surface.

Fortunately, there seem to have been no injuries. Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said the department has received no immediate reports of damage in Los Angeles. San Bernardino County Fire Dispatch had no immediate reports of injury or damage.

There were precautionary evacuations, including homes and office buildings.

Los Angeles County Sheriff's Spokesman Steve Whitmore was in the sheriff's Monterey Park headquarters east of Los Angeles when the quake hit.

"It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while," he said.

Approximately 2,000 detectives were in attendance at gang conference at a Marriott hotel in Anaheim, Orange County when a sudden, violent shock shook the conference room.

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

Chris Watkins, a resident of San Diego, said he has experienced previous earthquakes, but "that was one of the worst ones."

The last two large earthquakes in California took place in the 1990s. In 1994 an earthquake in Northridge, under Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley, was logged in at 6.7. The quake killed 72 people, injured over 9,000 and caused $25 billion worth of damage throughout the metropolitan area. The second was a 1999 earthquake in the Mojave Desert. This particular quake came in at a magnitude of 7.1 but caused few injuries.

California remains one of the world's "most seismically active regions" with more than 300 faults that "crisscross" the state and sits on top of the North American and Pacific tectonic plates, two of the planet's major plates. Approximately 10,000 earthquakes strike Southern California each year yet many are too insignificant to be noticed.