California quake strongest in 20 years

July 4, 2019 3:55 pm

By: The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Veteran seismologist Lucy Jones says the earthquake Thursday was the strongest to hit Southern California in 20 years.

She says the previous large quake was a 7.1 on that struck in the area on October 16, 1999.

A California official says there are some injuries and two house fires have been reported in a town near the epicenter of a 6.4 quake that rattled a large swath of Southern California and parts of Nevada.

Kern County Fire Chief David Witt says emergency crews are also dealing with small vegetation fires, cracks on some roads and gas leaks that were reported after the quake Thursday.

It struck in the Mojave Desert, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, near Ridgecrest. It is the strongest quake to hit the region in 20 years.

Witt says 15 patients were being evacuated from the Ridgecrest Regional Hospital as a precaution and out of concern for aftershocks.

Kern County District Supervisor Mick Gleason told CNN there are some structural issues with the hospital and some patients had to be moved from one ward to another and that others were taken to a neighboring building.

Gleason did not say what the structural issues were.

Jones told reporters at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, that the 6.4 quake centered in the Mojave Desert near the town of Ridgecrest was preceded by a magnitude 4.3 temblor about a half hour earlier.

She says it was vigorous aftershock sequence occurring and that she wouldn’t be surprise if a magnitude 5 quake occurred during the aftershocks.