The largest earthquake in California in more than three years shook a rural part of southern Mendocino County, causing some injuries Wednesday morning and power outages.
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The magnitude 5.6 quake was centered about seven miles north of the small community of Redwood Valley between Ukiah and Willits, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The ground shook about 8:10 a.m.
Broken wine bottles, dozens of boxes of cereal, canned food and other items that had been thrown from the shelves littered the aisles of the store.
“It took us four hours to clean up,” Chehada said.
The quake was the largest earthquake anywhere in California since Dec. 20, 2022, when a 6.4 quake hit near the small town of Ferndale on the Humboldt County coast.
The shaking set off earthquake alerts on phones across Northern California, including in the Bay Area. The California Office of Emergency Services reported that 657,000 early warning alerts were sent by the MyShake app.
Light shaking was felt as far south as Santa Rosa and San Francisco, and also along the coast near Fort Bragg, and to the east in parts of Sacramento, according to the USGS.
Mendocino County spokesperson Heather Rose said Wednesday morning that there were some reported injuries, but officials did not know the nature or extent of them. There were no reported deaths, she said.
Scientists said the fact that the epicenter was in a remote area was significant.
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“So far, thank goodness, it doesn’t look like it has been terribly damaging,” said Sarah Minson, a research geophysicist with the USGS Earthquake Science Center at Moffett Field. “The shaking intensity was strong right over the source, but it decayed fairly rapidly. There wasn’t a large area impact.”
Aftershocks also rattled communities near the epicenter. The USGS recorded a 2.5 earthquake at 8:17 a.m., as well as separate 2.7 and 2.6 quakes one closer to Willits, the other near Redwood Valley four seconds apart at 9:08 a.m. Other small aftershocks of 2.8 and 2.7 hit the area 11 minutes apart just before 11 a.m.
Rose said the earthquakes did not cause any major damage, but that officials were still working to assess the area.
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PG&E spokesperson Tamar Sarkissian said 10,000 customers lost power in Mendocino County. On its website, the utility said 7,439 customers in the county were without power at 11 a.m.
The depth of Monday’s earthquake was about 5 miles below the earth’s surface.
“Here in Redwood Valley, it was loud, violent, and definitely the strongest earthquake I can recall ever feeling,” wrote resident Deborah Alonso on Facebook. “I had things fall off the walls, off shelves, out of the medicine cabinet. Wine bottles fell from atop the cabinets onto the kitchen floor, and even a light fixture covering flew off.”
The quake is believed to have occurred on the Maacama Fault, according to the USGS. The fault runs 110 miles from Healdsburg in Sonoma County to Laytonville in Mendocino County. A northern extension of the Hayward Fault, it is capable of producing major earthquakes up to 7.5 magnitude, according to the USGS.
“I grew up in Willits,” Minson said. “I know that area very well. It is wine country around there. The epicenter is a very rural area.”
There were early reports of some power lines down.
“It felt like a big rolling wave,” Ukiah police Lt. Chase Rigby said. “The roll was a big one. Cabinets fell open, and some of the furniture moved.”
The last significant damaging earthquake in the nine-county Bay Area was the 6.0 South Napa Quake on Aug. 24, 2014, which killed 1 person, injured 300 and caused $1 billion in damage in Napa and Vallejo. Before that, it was the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta Earthquake on Oct. 17, 1989, which disrupted the World Series, and wrecked the Bay Bridge, Oakland’s Cypress Freeway, downtown Santa Cruz and parts of San Francisco, killing 63 people.
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Ukiah, home to about 16,000 residents, is the county seat of Mendocino County. Immediately after the quake, the county courthouse was evacuated as authorities checked for damage. People returned later in the day. Willits has about 5,000 residents. Both areas were known for redwood logging for generations, and more recently for wineries. Willits is also the location of Ridgewood Ranch, where the famed 1930s racehorse Seabiscuit, featured in a best-selling book and 2003 Oscar-nominated movie “Seabiscuit,” lived and is buried.
The Maacama Fault shaped the landscape of the region starting millions of years ago, Minson said, similar to how earthquakes and plate movement defined much of California’s geography.
“If you drive up Highway 101 there, it connects a bunch of valleys, each of which has a little town in it,” she said. “Basically, that is the fault system. The faults formed those valleys. It’s sort of like when you are on Interstate 280 on the Peninsula. That’s basically the San Andreas Fault.”
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