Quake rocks vast area of West but big cities dodge the bullet

Saturday, Oct. 16, 1999 | 3:04 a.m.

Thousands of utility customers lost power, mobile homes were knocked off pilings in a desert community and a highway bridge was cracked. But there were only a handful of injuries and no deaths in the most powerful quake to hit California since 1992.

"Thank God it took place in a remote area where there appears to be no tremendous damage or personal injuries," said Mayor Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, where a smaller 1994 earthquake caused $25 billion in damage.

The quake began at 2:46 a.m., waking millions as it swayed buildings 120 miles to the southwest in Los Angeles and in San Diego, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tijuana, Mexico.

Amtrak's Southwest Chief, rolling west through the dark desert, leaped off its tracks 47 miles east of Barstow but stayed upright, and only four of the 155 passengers were treated for injuries, none said to be serious.

"We were really, really blessed," said porter Randy Moore.

"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."

Some 90,000 utility customers lost power in patches scattered as far away as Santa Barbara and Los Angeles.

Twenty mobile homes, mostly unoccupied, were knocked off their blocks in Ludlow, an Interstate 40 hamlet near the epicenter and the derailment. A concrete bridge over I-40 cracked. Merchandise flew off shelves and at least one supermarket was left with structural damage. Light damage was also reported on the sprawling Marine Air Ground Combat Center south of Ludlow.

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

A hotel near Disneyland evacuated guests as a precaution. Some chose to finish the night in the lobby. Gamblers in Las Vegas paused, and some left their highrise hotel rooms for the ground-level casinos.

"The whole place was shaking like crazy," said Michelle Fabian, awakened on the 18th floor of the Mirage Hotel.

The big quake ended in seconds but aftershocks followed by the hundreds, including a 5.8, a 5.3 and a 5.0. It struck a day before the 10th anniversary of the 7.1-magnitude Loma Prieta quake that killed 63 people in the San Francisco Bay area.

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?"

Local residents also were taking it well.

In Twentynine Palms, which went ahead with its Pioneer Days parade, a Marine and his wife went to a State Bros. supermarket to pick up a birthday cake for their 1-year-old daughter. Yellow tape cordoned off the damaged store, blocking the entrance, but employees brought the cake out to them.

"They did a really good job of making sure it was done," said Cpl. Paul Woodrum.

It was the second huge earthquake spawned by the seismically active region in only seven years. But the magnitude-7.3 Landers earthquake on June 28, 1992, was much more destructive.

The Landers quake and a magnitude-6.5 quake that followed it within a few hours left one person dead, injured 400 and caused nearly $100 million in damage.

California Institute of Technology seismologist Egill Hauksson said the latest quake was 20 or 30 miles northeast of the Landers epicenter. It also had a smaller rupture length than Landers' 64-mile "daisy chain" of fault ruptures, he said.

Seismologists say there is no connection among the large quakes that have occurred recently around the world.

Last month, a magnitude-7.2 rocked Taiwan, killing more than 2,300 people and causing an estimated $9.2 billion in damage. In August, a 7.4 quake killed at least 17,000 people in western Turkey.