Sandra Herrera was getting dressed on Sunday morning when the ground began to shake. She felt two big jolts and heard a low growl. “I ...
Sandra Herrera was getting dressed on Sunday morning when the ground began to shake.
She felt two big jolts and heard a low growl.
“I thought it might be the Big One,” Ms Herrera, 22, said, referring to the dreaded earthquake in California.
It was not.
Yet the Magnitude 4.1 earthquake that shook parts of Southern California, including San Diego and Riverside counties, was strong enough to knock a bottle of lotion out of her dresser, said Ms. Herrera, who lives in Menifee, a town near about 75 miles north of San Diego.
The quake struck at 9:46 a.m. local time, about three miles west of Palomar Observatory, California, and was powerful enough to get people talking in Southern California. Although small earthquakes are common in the area, this one “seemed more powerful,” Ms. Herrera said.
Experts said Southern Californians have no reason to worry about the quake.
“It’s okay,” said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado, part of the US Geological Survey.
There are several faults in the area that produce many small earthquakes, but a 4.1 magnitude quake is pedestrian compared to some of the more notable earthquakes that have rocked the region, including the 6.7 magnitude Northridge earthquake in 1994. More than 60 people died in this natural disaster.
There were no reports of injuries or damage from Sunday’s earthquake, Mr Blakeman said.
“It usually takes more than a 5.0 earthquake to do damage in the United States,” he said.
The agency did not have an estimate of how long the quake would last, but several people reported that it lasted 10 to 20 seconds.
There were two minor aftershocks and there is about a 5% chance that a larger earthquake will follow, according to the Southern California Seismic Network.
The earthquake was a big moment for Carter Krengel, a 27-year-old paralegal who moved from Minnesota to California in 2018. It was the first time he had experienced an earthquake.
He said he thought it was a shockwave because he lives not far from Camp Pendleton, a Marine Corps base that is the site of numerous explosions.
Mr. Krengel was playing Mario Kart at his home in Vista, about 40 miles north of San Diego, when he heard something that sounded like a car crash, he said.
“Then I felt a distant rumble and the house shook,” he said.
He didn’t realize there had been an earthquake until he verified twitterwhere residents often go to see if the rumble they felt was just their imagination.
It was real.
“I don’t want to be in a bad place, obviously, but I wanted to feel the earth shake,” he said. “And I definitely did.”
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