Strong Quake Strikes off California

The National Weather Service said that the tsunami warning that extended along 500 miles (800 km) of the California and Oregon coasts was called off about 90 minutes after the earthquake struck at 10:44 a.m. Pacific Time (1:44 p.m. ET/1844 GMT). 

The quake, which hit at a shallow depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), was centered about 39 miles (63 km) west of the town of Ferndale, a sparsely populated portion of the northern California coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

In Ferndale, a town of about 1,400 people, residents and business owners were cleaning up broken crockery and merchandise after the quake struck.

“It was a big quake, it made you evacuate the building as fast as you could,” said Troy Land, a member of the Ferndale’s Volunteer Fire Department, who also owns a hardware store and said lumber and cans of paint went tumbling across the shop’s floor.

In San Francisco, where the quake was not felt, hospitality worker Nicole Steinberg, 25, said she was grabbing a coffee when an alert about the possible tsunami was sent to her phone, along with all the other patrons around her.

“I got a call from dad asking me to find higher ground immediately,” Steinberg said. “But no one else was freaking out too much. I took a while to decide whether to go back to the office or not. I decided to go to the Salesforce Park, which is higher up, and I waited there for an update.”

Some 4.7 million residents of California and Oregon had been under the tsunami warning before it was canceled, the National Weather Service said.

The City of Berkeley Police Department issued an evacuation order for parts of the city on the San Francisco Bay, but later sent an alert to residents saying that “no tsunami danger presently exists.”

In northern California, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office downgraded its evacuation warning for a tsunami to “situational awareness” in low lying areas.

About 19,000 clients were without power in Humboldt County – up from near zero before the earthquake struck, according to data from PowerOutage.us.

The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on social media that the governor “is now meeting with state emergency officials and working to ensure Californians are safe.”

Source: Reuters