Humboldt County, California earthquake: Tens of housands without power after 6.4 magnitude earthquake strikes 7.5 miles from Ferndale- QHN

CNN
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A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Northern California’s Eureka area early Tuesday, according to the US Geological Survey, shaking people from their sleep, leaving thousands without electricity and damaging at least one bridge.

The quake, striking at 2:34 a.m. PT, was centered in the Pacific just off the coast, about 7.5 miles from the Humboldt County city of Ferndale, the survey said. That’s about a 20-mile drive southwest of Eureka and a 280-mile drive northwest of Sacramento.

LIVE UPDATES: Earthquake shakes Northern California

Most homes and businesses in Humboldt County were without power early Tuesday. More than 71,000 outages were reported shortly after 4:30 a.m. PT – out of 99,000 customers tracked in the county – according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.

Wendy Pickett Monolias awoke to the shaking in Eureka.

“Once the shaking finally stopped, we got our flashlights and phones and looked around. Everything was in shambles.” Pickett Monolias said. “Things you wouldn’t expect to have fallen over or broken did. An entire cabinet in the bathroom fell over and broke apart.”

The quake spilled a number of items to the floor of Caroline Titus’ Ferndale-area home, a video she posted to Twitter shows. “This was a big one. Power is out now. House is a big mess,” Titus wrote.

The temblor left cracks in a bridge in Ferndale and debris on its roadway, the California Highway Patrol said. Police closed the span, CNN affiliate KRCR reported.

More than two dozen smaller quakes – as powerful as a 4.6 magnitude – struck the area afterward, the survey reported. The main quake produced at least some shaking from coastal Oregon to south of San Jose, California, public reports collected by the survey show.

Tuesday’s temblor comes exactly one year after a 6.2 magnitude quake struck roughly the same area. That quake struck just off Humboldt County’s Cape Mendocino on December 20, 2021, and caused minor damage to buildings in the area.

No current tsunami threat is associated with the quake, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.