‘It felt like the house was going to collapse,’ Ridgecrest resident says of 6.4 magnitude earthquake
As a 6.4 magnitude earthquake roared through the minute Kern County city of Ridgecrest Thursday, July 4, resident Jorge Toral said his house shook like Jell-O with just the slightest movement.
“It felt like the house was going to collapse,” the 30-year-old father of three said a few hours after the initial quake.
Reported at 10:33 a.m., the holiday temblor, one of the region’s biggest since the 1994 Northridge quake and the first to surpass magnitude 6 in two decades, displaced dozens of men, women and children celebrating the Fourth of July in their desert community of about 28,000.
“Things started going crazy,” said resident Aaron Leming, who added that water from his mother’s pool overflowed during the quake. “My car actually moved. It lasted about 10 seconds even though I felt like it lasted for a minute or two.”
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As aftershocks continued into the afternoon and early evening, Toral, who was watching television when the main quake hit, joined others chased from their homes in a Walmart parking lot to collect free water and Gatorade.
Many residents – fearful of a second large quake – said they, too, saw their houses sway during the temblor.
Dave Meade, 60, went as far as to pantomime how violently his house shifted.
“We felt traumatic shaking,” said 27-year-old Caleb Metcalf, who recently moved to Ridgecrest, his wife’s hometown. “It woke us up from a dead sleep. It was scary. Everything flew off the walls.”
The owner of a Ridgecrest market and adjacent Laundromat suffered a double indignity in the earthquake: Scores of glass bottles crashed to the floor, and in the Laundromat, the trap ceiling fell. pic.twitter.com/Z9WsZFQThA
— Brian Rokos (@Brian_Rokos) July 5, 2019
About 80 miles from the Lancaster/Palmdale area, 110 miles from Bakersfield and 120 miles from San Bernardino, Ridgecrest last felt a sizable earthquake in August 1995, when a 5.4 magnitude temblor shook the area and reportedly created more than 2,500 aftershocks over the course of five weeks.
Later that year, a 5.8 quake struck the area, then the largest to hit Southern California since the Northridge quake.
Thursday’s temblor, which prompted an emergency proclamation from Gov. Gavin Newsom, forced the evacuation of Ridgecrest Regional Hospital, a landmark off US Route 395, which runs through town.
While the hospital did not appear to suffer damage during the initial quake or the immediate aftershocks, hospital spokeswoman Jayde Glenn said, as a precaution, 25 patients – the facility’s capacity – were transported mostly by air to hospitals in Palmdale, Lancaster and Bakersfield.
No patients were in surgery or in critical condition at the time of the earthquake, Glenn said.
Despite the evacuation, the hospital’s emergency room and urgent care facility remained open. A portable tent was set up outside the building to treat incoming patients.
Hospital officials said a seismic engineer will inspect the facility before it completely reopens.
Kern County Fire Department officials said crews responded to nearly two dozen incidents around and near Ridgecrest following the quake, including calls for medical assistance and structure fires. While safe from severe damage, several local grocery stores lost power, requiring shoppers to pay with cash. Some goods fell off shelves and created a mess.
Downed power lines littered roads.
Meade, a civilian scientist who works on the geothermal program on the nearby Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, called Ridgecrest, whose Wikipedia page already has a section devoted to Thursday’s earthquake, a “quiet town.”
“It’s a good place to raise kids,” he said.