A preliminary magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck rural northern California on Wednesday morning, jolting homes, businesses and roads near Willits and leaving more than 6,000 residents without power. The quake hit at 8:10 a.m. Pacific time about 12 kilometers northwest of Willits, and people as far away as Fort Bragg felt the shaking.
The morning temblor mattered because it hit fast, broadly and in a place where big quakes are rare. Lucy Jones said it was the largest earthquake the region had seen in almost nine decades, a mark that points back to the last quake in 1940 and explains why people across the area searched for earthquake today updates within minutes of the shaking.
Alan Harris was at home in Kelseyville with his wife and daughter when the ground moved. He said he got an earthquake alert on his cell phone before the shaking began, then yelled for both of them to hold on. Harris said it was frightening and that he could hear objects crashing, especially on the third floor of the house.
At Club Calpella in Calpella, the quake hit just as the business was opening for the morning. Brie Leon said she had just switched on the open sign and walked back to the kitchen when the shaking started. She said it felt as if something had struck the building, and that although it was not a very large quake, things were thrown everywhere.
Heather Rose said hospitals had reported some injured people, but officials said there were no immediate reports of major damage. That gap between injuries and the lack of serious destruction is what made the first hours of the response uneasy: crews were dealing with power losses across six towns near the epicenter while still waiting to learn how badly people were hurt.
The Oficina Ejecutiva del Condado Mendocino urged people to stay off highways and roads so crews could inspect for damage and make repairs. The quake's depth was 8 kilometers, and the area, a rural stretch of Mendocino County made up of small farming towns, is not on a major fault. Jones said aftershocks were likely but probably few, and three smaller quakes below magnitude 2.7 were recorded near the epicenter within an hour.
Later Wednesday, officials were expected to meet again as more information on injuries and damage could come out. For now, the clearest picture is of a strong but shallow quake that rattled a wide area, cut power to thousands and reminded residents that even a region not known for major faults can still be shaken hard.
