Southland Rattled by Baja Quake

ENSENADA — An earthquake measuring at least 5.0 on the Richter scale struck Baja California on Monday, awakening Southern Californians as far north as Orange County but causing no injury or damage, officials said.

“We felt it. It didn’t feel real strong, and we’ve gotten just a few calls about it,” Pat McNew, a San Diego County sheriff’s dispatcher, said of the quake, which struck at 5:17 a.m.

The California Institute of Technology said the quake was centered in a sparsely populated area about 45 miles east of the Baja California resort town of Ensenada. Caltech measured the quake at 5.3, spokesman Bob Finn said. Scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Earthquake Center in Golden, Colo., recorded the tremor at a preliminary magnitude of 5.0.