Jul. 6 -- For the second consecutive day, a major earthquake shook Southern California -- this one registering a magnitude of 7.1 on Friday night. The strongest earthquake to hit the state in two decades, it was felt across California, including in Sacramento.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake hit at 8:19 p.m., 11 miles north-northeast of Ridgecrest, near where a magnitude 6.4 quake hit Thursday morning, but was more shallow than previous slips. It was followed by nearly 100 aftershocks, some of which were magnitude 4.0 or higher across the Searles Valley, an area straddling Inyo, Kern and San Bernardino counties.
Friday's quake caused at least two structure fires, damage to roads and some injuries in Ridgecrest and the surrounding area, which was already trying to recover from the previous temblor.
Mark Ghilarducci, director of the state Office of Emergency Services, said there were significant reports in Ridgecrest of fires, mostly the result of gas leaks. Live TV reports show the town of 29,000 took a second straight day of damage with merchandise in area grocery stories knocked off shelves and residents preparing to sleep outside as shaking continued beneath them.
Ghilarducci said late Friday night from his agency's headquarters near Rancho Cordova that assessments of damage on the ground were hampered by darkness, but that authorities were concerned about vulnerabilities at hospitals and other care centers after the latest temblor. "As day breaks, we'll get a total assessment of the damage," he said.
He said the hardest hit area was the town of Trona, 20 miles northeast of Ridgecrest in San Bernardino County, where a building collapsed and more fires were reported. Officials were having a difficult time getting to the town of 1,500 people because of damaged roads, he said; of most concern was the Searles Valley Minerals plant, the town's main employer and a manufacturer of borax materials and other compounds used in cleaners, soaps and the chemical industries.
Highway 178, the major highway through the area, suffered significant damage and was closed along several stretches in and around the high desert communities, according to Caltrans. Rock slides had occurred in the canyon between Bakersfield and Lake Isabella, closing the highway there. Slides also took place on Highways 127 and 190 to the west of the epicenter, the agency said, but were already cleared by crews. State officials said more than 100 mutual aid personnel were dispatched to the scene from Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Fresno counties, among others.
Some were already in the area from Thursday's quake and had been released shortly before Friday's quake. Ghilarducci said multiple state resources, as well as officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, were working to assist in disaster relief, noting that more earthquakes were expected. "This is not something that'll be over right away," he said. The quake knocked out power to about 1,800 households, according to the Kern County Fire Department. In addition, the department received multiple calls for medical aid but there were no reports of fatalities.
"Homes shifted, foundation cracks, retaining walls down," read one social media post by the San Bernardino County Fire District shortly after the quake. The severity of the quake, which was reported for a time with a magnitude of 6.9, was nearly twice the intensity of the 1989 Loma Preita quake that struck the Bay Area in 1989, and was about 22 times stronger than shaking that hit the Napa area in 2014.
According to the Los Angeles Times, shaking was not as intense in the Los Angeles area, about 110 miles from the epicenter, and there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. The earthquake was felt in Sacramento, about 300 miles from the epicenter, as well as Stockton and Marysville.
The quake was felt as far east as Phoenix and south to Mexico, according to the USGS. In Las Vegas, NBA Summer League action was halted after the quake as speakers above the court swayed for more than 10 minutes at Thomas & Mack Center. Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology and a former science adviser at USGS, said at a news conference Friday night that more strong earthquakes in this series of quakes were likely to happen in the next week.
"We're having a robust sequence," she said from the Caltech Seismological Laboratory in Pasadena. "There's no reason to think it's going to be stopping." Officials said that in the four hours after the shaking started, the fault area had four earthquakes greater than magnitude 5, 20 quakes in the magnitude 4 range and more than 50 quakes from 3.0 to 3.9. Jones said Friday's 7.1 earthquake was triggered by Thursday's quake, which scientists now considered a foreshock.
"These earthquakes are related," she said, adding that the new quake probably ruptured along about 25 miles of fault line. Jones and others scientists said more shaking was a certainty in the next week: "The chance of something over (magnitude) 6 is 50 percent." "It seems to be dying down a bit, but we have never seen a sequence like this suddenly stop," she said. "But it's far from unprecedented."
"There's a 5 percent chance that this could be followed by an even larger quake," said Robert Graves, a USGS seismologist, also speaking at Friday's news conference. However, the quake was unlikely to affect fault lines or regions outside of the Ridgecrest area, Jones said, noting that the gigantic San Andreas Fault was far away. "As you go away from distance, it becomes much less likely. it's over a hundred miles (to) the San Andreas (fault line) from this location," she said. The nearest large city to feel the quake was Bakersfield, 100 miles to the west, where shaking went on for almost 30 seconds, according to some reports. Garrett Pacheco, a firefighter who lives in the city's southwest area, said he was out to dinner with his family when they felt the quake strike.
He said the shaking lasted about 15 to 20 seconds at the restaurant, where the evening din turned quiet as lighting from above swayed for more than a minute. "We felt it, definitely. Everybody felt it in the restaurant," he said. "It was bigger one than the first one, we really felt this one." He and his wife, Cynthia, said that while everyone around town has been talking about Thursday's first quake, not many people were taking it too seriously. They suspected that might change after Friday night. "It's kinda crazy. One thing about it, you start thinking, 'Where was the epicenter and how bad was it?'," he said.
In a statement just after 9 p.m., Gov. Gavin Newsom said state resources, including the state OES, were monitoring the situation and assisting local emergency personnel.
"In response to another large earthquake in Southern California tonight, I have activated the @Cal_OES state operation center to its highest level," Newsom wrote in a Twitter post. "And the state is coordinating mutual aid to local first responders." Ghilarducci, the state's emergency chief, also said that Newsom had reached out to the White House to ask for President Donald Trump to issue a presidential emergency declaration, which could quickly provide federal money and resources.
More earthquakes had been expected after the July 4 quake in Ridgecrest was felt across a wide swath of Southern California. Hours earlier, seismologists had said that quake had been followed by more than 1,700 aftershocks and that they might continue for years.
"The potential for danger can't be underestimated, and residents of Southern California must be prepared in case there are further, more dangerous quakes," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said in prepared remarks.
The Fresno Bee's Marilyn Castaneda, Tim Sheehan and Anthony Galaviz contributed to this report.
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