Saturday, March 29, 2014

Medium Earthquake Hits Los Angeles

Fromt he LA Times: A magnitude-5.1 earthquake centered in northern Orange County rippled across the Los Angeles Basin, and preliminary indications suggest the long-feared Puente Hills thrust fault may have caused it.
The quake caused pictures to fall of walls, glass items to shatter and furniture to tumble down in some homes near the epicenter. There were also reports of some gas and water line damage as well as scattered power outages.
At a home in San Dimas, dozens of pictures flew off walls, a ladder fell and dented a car in garage and medicine cabinets flew open and emptied out. In Orange, a few miles to the east of the epicenter, patrons at a BJ's pub went from boisterous conversation to tense silence. The suspended LED lights swayed. The vodka behind the bar stayed where it was. When the quake was over, the room erupted in applause.
At Disneyland, some rides were shut down as a precaution, according to guests there. Los Angeles officials said they had no reports of damage in the city.
Brea police said there were some minor injuries during a rockslide in Carbon Canyon, which caused a car to overturn. Carbon Canyon Road is closed, police said.
The main shock hit at 9:09 p.m. near Brea, with the epicenter only about 2 to 3 miles underneath the surface, which “means the shaking is very concentrated in a small area,” Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson said.
The very first indications are that the quake is “related to the Puente Hills thrust fault, which caused the Whittier Narrows earthquake back in 1987. That may change over time as we look at the data,” Hauksson said.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-51-earthquake-rattles-southern-california-homes-damaged-20140328,0,4932643.story#ixzz2xKl0W6EC
Sooner or later, there will be the big one in California and with any luck, the western part of the State will fall into the Pacific Ocean.

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