Earthquake rocks Southern California

Saturday, Oct. 16, 1999 | 9:30 a.m.

Up to 90,000 utility customers were hit by power outages, 20 mobile homes were knocked off pilings in a desert community and a highway bridge was cracked, but the 2:46 a.m. earthquake caused little more than incidental damage in the huge population centers to the west and south.

Amtrak's Southwest Chief carrying 155 passengers from Chicago to Los Angeles jumped off rails near Ludlow, 125 miles east of Los Angeles, but the cars remained upright. Four people were treated for minor injuries, said Barstow Community Hospital spokesman John Rader.

"Our saving grace was we were following a freight train," said conductor Glenn Morton. "We were going 60 mph instead of the 80 mph we normally would do through here."

All the homes in a Ludlow mobile home park were shoved off their foundations.

"I just laid there and covered my head until it was over," said gas station clerk Mary Vintes.

The quake was centered 32 miles north of Joshua Tree, 100 miles east of Los Angeles, according to the California Institute of Technology. Aftershocks rolled through the region for hours, including a 5.8 and a 5.3 among more than a dozen of magnitude-4 or greater.

"We have had hundreds of smaller ones, if not thousands," said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson. "So far there is nothing unusual about the aftershock sequence."

The earthquake occurred in the same area that produced the 7.3 Landers' temblor seven years ago but it was not an aftershock, said U.S. Geological Survey Seismologist Lucy Jones.

Both big quakes occurred in an area of ongoing ground deformation known as the Eastern California Shear Zone, but Hauksson said today's quake was on a fault 20 or 30 miles northeast of the Landers epicenter. It also had a smaller rupture length than Landers, which involved a 64-mile "daisy chain" of fault ruptures, Hauksson said.

Power outages hit about 80,000 Southern California Edison customers and 5,000 to 10,000 Los Angeles Department of Water and Power users. Outages were widely scattered, darkening areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties, the Riverside-San Bernardino region and Santa Barbara.

Many of the outages were brief, but some customers remained without power for hours, said SoCal Edison spokesman Paul Klein.

The earthquake was felt for hundreds of miles across Southern California and at least as far away as Phoenix. There were reports of scattered power outages and transformer explosions. Downed power lines started small brush fires near Palm Springs.

The quake rocked the Twentynine Palms home of surf music guitarist Dick Dale.

"I was like a ball going back and forth in a pinball machine," Dale said. "I was thrown back and forth. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam, thrown from one wall to the other."

Fire Chief Wayne Eder said a Twentyning Palms supermarket had structural and water damage, a tree fell on a trailer home and there were several natural gas leaks. Four elderly people reported chest pains but refused to be taken to hospitals by paramedics.

"It's been pretty crazy here today ... we got hit pretty hard," Eder said.

"That was a bad one," Lucille Manning said from her home in Chino, east of 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 Joshua Tree, 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.

Water and gas lines broke at the Marine Corps Air-Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, but no injuries or major damage were reported, said Gunnery Sgt. Leah Gonzalez.

"I live in town, and my house was rocking and rolling," Gonzalez said. "We were diving for the door frames."

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.

The magnitude-7.3 Landers earthquake in 1992 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 centered near the Northridge area of Los Angeles killed 72 people and caused an estimated $40 billion in damage.

"The level of shaking is comparable to what was experienced in Northridge," Jones said. "The good news is that there are fewer people out there."