L.A. quake rattles Vegas

Saturday, Oct. 16, 1999 | 9:32 a.m.

But only for a few.

As frightened guests left high-rise rooms for ground-level casinos, the cherries and oranges soon started spinning again in the slots and the gamblers restacked chips on black and red. Wagers picked up at a faster pace than before.

``I figure if I'm up, I may as well lose some more change,'' said Martha Anderson of Chicago, cradling her cup of coins for the slots at Caesars Palace. ``I don't think I could go back to sleep now, anyway. It scared the devil out of me.''

Candy McCain of Phoenix interrupted, briefly, her slots play at the Mirage.

``Everybody stopped for a minute. Then they started playing again. Not too long after it hit, it got even busier than before,'' McCain said. ``I wasn't sure exactly what was going on, but then I saw the signs swaying and the leaves on the fake palms rustling, so I thought it must be an earthquake. When it stopped, I started playing again,'' she said.

The quake struck at 2:46 a.m., awaking people in three states and halting business temporarily in the city that never sleeps.

The quake, centered some 150 miles to the west, caused the hotels along the Las Vegas strip to sway, but there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries.

In California, 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.

Aftershocks rolled through the Southern California region for hours, including a 5.8 and a 5.3 among more than a dozen of magnitude-4 or greater.

The quake rattled the nerves of many out-of-towners.

"I'm 71 years old and I've never felt anything like that," said Veronica DeMarzo of New York. "It shook me right out of my bed."

Lisa Taylor of Boerne, Texas, and friends Dorothy and Sherry Garner of Wister, Okla., were hesitant to go back inside their hotel.

"It scared the devil out of me," she said.

"At first I thought it was hail," Taylor said, still looking jittery as she sat on a bench outside the Mirage. "I jumped out of bed and realized the room was swaying back and forth. We were on the 19th floor and it really seemed to move a lot."

Dorothy Garner, 66, said she couldn't believe she made it down 18 flights of stairs so quickly.

"It must have been some kind of record," she said. "I don't even like to use stairs."