Southern California was on Thursday rocked by its largest earthquake in two decades, a magnitude 6.4 temblor that caused “substantial damage” at a military facility, but otherwise only minor injuries in the sparsely populated area.
The shallow earthquake, followed by dozens of aftershocks, struck in the Mojave Desert 10km from the small city of Ridgecrest at 10:33am. It was felt about 258km away in Los Angeles and even as far afield as Las Vegas in the neighboring state of Nevada, as the US celebrated its Independence Day holiday.
Although the earthquake in the most populous US state of California revived fears of the “Big One” — a powerful tremor along the San Andreas Fault that could devastate major cities in southern California — US President Donald Trump was quick to reassure that this was not it.
“All seems to be very much under control,” he said on Twitter two hours after the earthquake in the Searles Valley of San Bernardino County.
The area “will continue having a lot of aftershocks,” some maybe as strong as magnitude 5, California Institute of Technology seismologist Lucy Jones told a news conference.
The earthquake was the largest in southern California since 1999, when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck US Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms, the Los Angeles Times said.
Thursday’s epicenter was in or on the edge of the US Navy’s sprawling desert bomb testing range, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, which covers 445,000 hectares and strictly controls the airspace above it. Inside, the navy develops and tests missiles, bombs, artillery shells and other ordnance, and the aircraft used to deliver it.
An official at China Lake told reporters that there was “substantial damage” to their facilities, including fires, water leaks and spills of hazardous materials.
Paul Dale, the station’s commanding officer, later said at a news conference that officials were making “damage assessments,” but declined to elaborate.
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 that the local hospital had been evacuated as a precaution, and she had received reports of a handful of house fires.
Some areas of the city had lost power, while the gas supply had been cut due to ruptured lines, she said.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department 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,” it added.
The earthquake struck at a depth of 10.7km in the vast desert region.
Residents told a local TV station that the shaking set off panic, while sending TVs plunging to the ground and causing drawers to fall open.
Reporters in Los Angeles clearly felt the earthquake for about 10 seconds.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that there was no significant damage in the second-largest US city.
Jones said that there was a small possibility that this earthquake 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 added, including more than 100 that the US Geological Survey measured at greater than magnitude 2.5.
However, Jones said that the earthquake was not along the San Andreas fault.
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