Earthquake rocks Southern
California
Filed: 10/16/99
By ANTHONY BREZNICAN
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A magnitude-7.0 earthquake centered in the
Southern California desert shook buildings from downtown Los Angeles to
Las Vegas and Arizona early today. An Amtrak train was knocked off the
tracks, but no serious injuries were reported.
Amtrak said its Southwest Chief en route from Chicago to Los Angeles
derailed in the Mojave Desert near Ludlow, a community on Interstate 40
more than 125 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
There were 155 passengers on the 25-car train and none were injured, said
an Amtrak official at the Wilmington, Del., operations center. The passenger
cars remained upright, and Amtrak planned to take the passengers to Los
Angeles by bus.
Karen Kahler, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, said
the quake hit at 2:46 a.m. and was centered 32 miles north of Joshua Tree,
100 miles east of Los Angeles. There were multiple aftershocks.
The earthquake was felt for hundreds of miles across Southern California
and at least as far away as Yuma, Ariz. There were reports of scattered
power outages and transformer explosions. Downed power lines started
small brush fires near Palm Springs.
"That was a bad one. Things are bouncing around all over. But we are all
right. I have to go and call the kids," Lucille Manning said from her home in
Chino, east of downtown Los Angeles.
The earthquake woke up tourists in Las Vegas, 170 miles from the
epicenter.
"I wasn't sure what it was," said John Fabian, who was staying on the 18th
floor of the Mirage Hotel. "My wife hit me and said we've got to get ... out of
here."
Fabian's wife, Michele, added: "The whole place was shaking like crazy."
Authorities in Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area said there were no
reports of serious damage or injuries.
"Most people just slept right through it," said Lt. Rich Paddock of the
Orange County Sheriff's Department. "It shook everything pretty good, but
that was about it."
The few calls authorities received were from mostly from frightened people
who were awakened by the quake and were curious about damage.
The effects of the earthquake were more pronounced in the lightly populated
region around the epicenter.
California Highway Patrol dispatcher Joe Serrano in Barstow said a bridge
on Interstate 40 was heavily damaged but the freeway remained open.
Jacob Naylor, night manager at the Joshua Tree Inn in Joshua Tree, said the
structure lost power but there was no sign of damage.
"Twelve guests, all definitely awake. A couple in from Holland, definitely
shocked. A couple in from the U.K. asked me, `Is this normal?"' Naylor
said. "They're all taking it rather well, kind of excited. Vacationers, new
experiences, what can I say?"
In Yucca Valley, Dr. Daniel Injo said the Hi-Desert Medical Center was
relying on emergency power, as was the San Bernardino County Sheriff's
station in Joshua Tree.
Gerri Hagman, owner of the Homestead Inn bed-and-breakfast in
Twentynine Palms, near the epicenter, said she had a lot of broken dishes
and things thrown off shelves. She couldn't see any structural damage.
"I'm a native Californian and I've been in a lot of them; this was a whopper,"
Hagman said.
In Ridgecrest, a small community about 250 miles north of Los Angeles,
groceries toppled from shelves and awoke residents, but officials said there
were no reports of damage or injuries.
"I was asleep and shaken out of bed," said Rachel Holden, an editor at the
Ridgecrest Daily Independent.
Caltech at first said the temblor was an aftershock to the 1992 Landers
magnitude-7.3 earthquake but then said it was not. The Landers quake was
followed a few hours later by a magnitude-6.5 quake in the San Bernardino
Mountains in which one person was killed. There have been more than
70,000 aftershocks.
On Jan. 17, 1994, a 6.7-magnitude quake struck Northridge, just north of
Los Angeles, killing 72 people and causing an estimated $40 billion in
damage.
"The level of shaking is comparable to what was experienced in Northridge,"
said Lucy Jones, a seismologist with U.S. Geological Survey at Caltech.
"The good news is that there are fewer people out there." |
