‘It’s insane.’ How rattled Northern Californians weathered 7.0 earthquake and tsunami warning
Items flew off shelves, cellphones blared with tsunami warnings and some people struggled to stay on their feet as a magnitude 7 earthquake rocked Northern California on Thursday.
“I have fireplaces flying forward,” said Olivia Cobian, the innkeeper at the Gingerbread Mansion, a bed-and-breakfast in the historic town of Ferndale, as sirens wailed in the background Thursday morning. “It’s insane.”
Her building, built in 1895, “looked like a war zone” after the shaking stopped.
“Claw tubs that had been lifted off [their mounts] and scooched over,” she said. “This is crazy.”
Centered under the Pacific Ocean about 70 miles southwest of Eureka, the quake frayed nerves across most of California’s North Coast. And as the shaking stopped, tsunami warnings began to blare from cellphones, with local officials worried that the strong tremor could spark a second threat.
San Francisco Zoo was evacuated and closed because of the tsunami warning, and the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District temporarily shut down the underwater Transbay Tube. By noon, the agency said on social media that it had resumed normal operations, but that riders should expect delays.
The earthquake occurred at 10:44 a.m. with an epicenter under the Pacific Ocean, about 70 miles southwest of Eureka and 110 miles northwest of Mendocino.
In San Francisco, firefighters scanned the beaches and ordered people to evacuate, while dozens of people gathered at the waterfront to watch the waves roll in. One man was seen watching the crashing waves with his dog, while a lone surfer remained out in the water taking advantage of the large swell.
Tsunami evacuation orders and warnings were issued for residents along the coast in West Berkeley, the Mendocino County coast and Pinole, among others. Before noon, the U.S. Tsunami Warning Center canceled the alert, informing residents there was no tsunami threat after all.
“It was a big earthquake,” said Kaitlin Graves, an employee at Petrolia General Store about 50 miles south of Eureka. “It was a lot of up-and-down shaking.”
Objects were knocked off the shelves, and glass items shattered on the ground, she said.
“It felt like the woozy feeling you get when you’re in an elevator,” she said.
In the community of Manila, five miles north of Eureka, Jennifer Savage, who works at the Surfrider Foundation, said Pacific Gas & Electric workers were perched high in the air working on power lines when the lines began to sway during the quake. After the shaking stopped, the workers came down and drove away safe.
She said the tsunami evacuation warnings prompted some confusion among neighbors, who wondered what to do exactly.
“People are pretty freaked out,” she said.
Renee Chappelle, a 77-year-old Eureka native, said she has lived through five quakes that were magnitude 7 or stronger.
“It’s pretty usual for us in Humboldt County to get earthquakes,” said Chappelle, who is the innkeeper of Hydrangea Inn, which was built by her great-aunt in the 1930s.
The house was built from redwood and still has its original studs, so its sturdiness prevented it from sustaining any damage in the temblor, Chappelle said. It wasn’t the strongest earthquake she’s experienced, she said, but it felt like the longest.
“I’m as close as you can get on land,” she added. “I’m on the coast.”
Julie Symons and her husband found that the earthquake caused a small leak at her business, Mitchell Grove, a wedding venue in Eureka.
The quake caused the building to shake side to side, and a plumber is already taking care of the leak.
“It was a big earthquake,” she said. “This was the biggest earthquake at Mitchell Grove since we’ve been here since 2013.”
Residents in Petrolia, near the epicenter of the quake, reported shaking so intense that they found it difficult to stand up.
No major damage or injuries have been reported as of Thursday afternoon, but the magnitude of the quake and series of alerts were a strong reminder about the possibility of a damaging earthquake striking California.
Humboldt County Supervisor Rex Bohn, whose district includes the earthquake zone, said there has been no major damage reported so far.
“I just talked to one of our local hospital providers ... and they seem to be doing OK,” he said.”It’s a mess. There’s a lot of stuff off the shelves.”
Emergency officials with Humboldt Bay Fire initially received reports of a 6.0 earthquake at 10:44 a.m. about 45 miles southwest of Eureka, but that was upgraded to a 7.0 shortly after. The earthquake was followed by multiple aftershocks.
“It was a sudden jolt and it rolled out, is what I’m hearing from people in the epicenter,” Bohn said.
About 200 miles southeast in the community of Cobb, “the chandeliers in the dining room were shaking a little bit” at Adams Springs Golf Course, said Armond Urbano, who runs the pro shop there. “But that was about the extent of it.”
Some players didn’t feel it at all, he said.
In Ferndale, about 20 miles south of Eureka, the quake also appeared to cause little damage. At Valley Grocery, a worker who decline to identified herself said that the quake knocked products off the shelves but that there was no major damage.
On the social media site X, Caroline Titus, former publisher and editor of the Ferndale Enterprise, uploaded a series of videos and photos of the damage in town, including broken bottles and items that fell off shelves at grocery stores and a hotel.
“Not one plate glass window out. Incredible,” she wrote on X. “And I was here for the three major quakes in 1992 and the last few December ones.”
In a phone interview, Ferndale Police Chief Ron Sligh said there was no severe structural damage in town. He said that two water mains broke but that they were being repaired.
He said that the town also experienced some power outages but that they lasted only a few minutes. He said schools have canceled classes for the day.
“We came out of it well,” Sligh said.
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