LOS ANGELES 6th July: Some damage to buildings was duly reported by the US Geological Survey, after a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Southern California on Friday, a few hours after the biggest quake in the region in 25 years.
The quake hit the town of Ridgecrest on the edge of Death Valley National Park 202 km north-east of Los Angeles. It was counter-measured at 7.1 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Agency.
The San Bernadino County Fire Department stated that due to the quake, some damage had occured to buildings.
A swarm of strong aftershocks have jolted the high desert region since a 6.4 quake on Thursday. Only a handful of injuries were currently reported in Thursday’s quake but two houses caught fire from broken gas pipes, officials said.
The Los Angeles commuter rail service Metrolink said on Twitter it has stopped service in the city of four million people for the time being.
Pools in Los Angeles swept around wildly and TV crews with cameras at baseball’s Dodger Stadium kept shaking as they shot the night game with the San Diego Padres.
The quake on Thursday quake during America’s Independence Day celebrations was very large in Southern California, since the 1994 magnitude 6.6 Northridge earthquake.
That quake, which was centred in a heavily populated area of Los Angeles, killed 57 people and caused billions of dollars of damage.