6.1 Earthquake Gives Southland a Good Shaking

A moderate earthquake rolled through Southern California like a slow freight train Wednesday night, shaking buildings and rattling nerves in Orange County as the ground shook from Santa Barbara to the Mexican border.

The temblor struck at 9:51 p.m. and produced a preliminary reading of 6.1 magnitude, seismologists at Caltech said. It was centered about nine miles east of Desert Hot Springs near the San Andreas fault in the Palm Springs area.

In Orange County, nerves were rattled, but there were no reports of damage or injuries.

“Oh yeah, rocking and rolling. That was a good one,” quipped Santa Ana Police Department Cpl. David Marshall.

In Anaheim, Police Sgt. Ed Pierson said the department got only a few phone calls. “But it shook us up pretty good. I was sitting here in a chair, talking to a guy who was standing up, and I could see a chair moving, and I said, ‘I think we’re having an earthquake.’ ”

“Oh, boy, it just rolled,” said Hilda Madrid, a records clerk with Laguna Beach Police Department. The quake “came in real sneaky like, real gentle . . . and then it picked up speed and strength and then it faded away,” she said.

“We only had two calls,” Madrid said. “One lady called up and said, ‘Did you feel it?’ We said yes and she hung up.”

Capt. Dan Young of the Orange County Fire Department said an emergency survey of the most hazardous sites in the county showed no damage, but fire officials were continuing to check other sites.

“We have not heard of any major damage,” Young said. “All of our fire engines, 100 pieces of engine equipment, are checking for damage in an order of priority.”

Young said the County Fire Department provides service to 16 cities and unincorporated areas that make up of about half of the county.

Mary Gagne, working a cash register at a Lucky’s market on Euclid Street in Fullerton, said, “Some salsa bottles fell on the floor, but they already have that up. Other than that, it was just a lot of shaking.”

Business was back to normal within minutes. “I have to go now,” Gagne said, “because I have customers at my cash register.”

Just a few miles away, at an Alpha Beta market on Magnolia Avenue in Anaheim, relieved employees said there was no damage from the quake.

But customer Lucille Johnson said: “The windows made an awful noise, like they were going to explode any second. I grabbed my cart because it started to roll down the aisle. It happened too fast for me to seek cover.”

Earlier Wednesday night, a moderate earthquake rocked parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, knocking out some telephone service. There were no reports of damage or injury in that earlier quake.

The 7:25 p.m. earthquake measured 4.6 on the Richter scale and was centered nine miles east of Desert Hot Springs, said Julie Hakewill, spokeswoman for Caltech’s seismology lab in Pasadena.

It was followed by several aftershocks, including one measuring 2.7, she said. Desert Hot Springs is about 110 miles east of Los Angeles.

There were no damage or injury reports in Palm Springs, 15 miles southeast of the quake’s epicenter, said a city Police Department records officer who identified herself only as Cathy.

“I was leaning on a file cabinet when the cabinet began to shake,” she said.

The quake knocked out some telephone service in Yucca Valley and in Twentynine Palms, said Gary Daigneault of KCDZ radio.

Residents reported feeling the quake as far as Newberry Springs, near Barstow, said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department dispatcher Bob Duncan. There were no reports of damage or injury in the Morongo-Yucca Valley area, he said.