Dozens Injured as Strong Quake Rocks San Francisco Bay Area | WPN World People News

Dozens of people were injured, two of them seriously, when a 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit the city of Napa in the wine-producing region of northern California, the city government said.

The tremor caused six significant fires, including at four mobile homes, Napa Division Fire Chief Darren Drake told The Associated Press. Two fires were still burning Sunday morning.

The damage from the fires is not yet clear, but it appears significant, he said. Several other smaller fires have been reported and firefighting efforts have been complicated by broken water mains.

The city government said there were 50 gas main breaks, 30 water main leaks and damage to historic buildings as well as to commercial properties.

It was the biggest quake in the region in 25 years, striking at 3:20 a.m. local time (1020 GMT), and centered about 8 kilometers (five miles) northwest of the town of American Canyon, on the northern edge of the Bay, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

California earthquake locator map (Credit: USGS)
California earthquake locator map (Credit: USGS)

California earthquake locator map (Credit: USGS)

Two people were seriously injured in the earthquake, Barry Martin, public information officer for Napa, said. He said he did not have details on the injuries.

There were no reports of any fatalities, Martin added.

Firefighters were still trying to put out mobile home fires, he said.

An 2.6-magnitude aftershock hit about 30 minutes afterward, USGS said.

USGS expert Jessica Turner told KCBS radio that aftershocks of up to 5.0 are likely in the next week.

The California Highway Patrol closed several off-ramps to highways and at least two roads in Napa Valley because of "significant roadway damage."

Power outages, affecting nearly 50,000 households, were reported in Napa and Sonoma, which anchor two of California's most celebrated wine-producing areas, Pacific Gas and Electric Company told the French news agency AFP.

Police dispatchers in nearby San Francisco and Oakland said there were no reports of major damage.

'Rolling quake'

“It was a rolling quake,” Oakland resident Rich Lieberman told AP. “It started very much like a rolling sensation and just got progressively worse in terms of length. Not so much in terms of shaking, but it did shake. It felt like a side-to-side kind of rolling sensation. Nothing violent but extremely lengthy and extremely active.”

The USGS said the depth of the earthquake was just less than seven miles.

“A quake of that size in a populated area is of course widely felt throughout that region,” Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, told the AP.

“The 6.0 is a sizeable quake for this area. It's a shallow quake. It's about 6 miles deep. We received hundreds of reports on our website from people that felt it in the surrounding area," he added.

Loma Preita quake

The earthquake is the largest to hit the San Francisco Bay area since the 6.9-magnitude 1989 Loma Prieta quake on Oct. 17, 1989.

The temblor lasted just seconds, but it was destructive: 63 people were killed, nearly 3,800 were injured, and more than 28,000 homes and businesses were damaged.

The upper deck of a section of Oakland’s Interstate 880 collapsed, crushing cars and people on the lanes below. A section of the San Francisco Bay Bridge was also damaged.

There were also more than 62,000 baseball fans at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park for the third game of the 1989 World Series. They were shaken but unharmed by the quake.

The cities of Santa Cruz and Watsonville, California, and the San Francisco Bay were especially hard hit.

Source: Voice of America