Major Earthquake Rattles California’s North Coast

(TNS) — A powerful 7.0 earthquake off the coast of Humboldt County Thursday morning, followed by a series of aftershocks, left people scared and shaken — and grateful the damage wasn’t worse.

Thursday’s earthquake, one of the largest to hit the North Coast region in the past decade, struck at 10:44 a.m., sending tremors through Mendocino, Sonoma and Napa counties and triggering a tsunami warning from the National Weather Service.

That warning, later canceled, prompted precautionary evacuations of parks and beaches up and down the Mendocino and Sonoma coast.

The initial temblor knocked bottles off bar shelves and sent merchandise flying in Humboldt County stores. But the region appeared to have been spared the catastrophic damage that can accompany such awesome seismic events.

“We came through it better than we thought we would,” said Rick Nicholson, chief of the Ferndale Volunteer Fire Department.

“Back in ’92, we had three (earthquakes) in 24 hours — really tore things up.” That disaster also taught they city how to prepare for future earthquakes, he said.

“So far, there’s a lot of broken glass, pictures off walls, frazzled nerves,” he said.

The city’s water department reported some leaks from underground lines. “Crews are working on isolating and fixing those as fast as possible.

“The public was great, and we came through it better than we should have,” he concluded.

“A miracle” there wasn’t more damage

In Rio Dell, 10 miles to the southeast, city manager Kyle Knopp said “At this point our assessment is showing relatively light damage to the city.”

A wide crack had opened in Blue Slide Road, squeezing traffic to one lane, and a gas leak was reported at Monument Middle School. Students were evacuated, the gas turned off, the leak repaired.

The city’s water and wastewater systems were operating at full capacity, he added. That was not the case two years ago, when a Dec. 20, 2022 quake knocked both systems offline.

While that 2022 earthquake was “extremely violent with vertical, random motion,” said Knopp, “this was more like an unwelcome roller coaster.”

California Senate Pro Tempore Mike McGuire traveled to Humboldt County Thursday, along with Assembly member Chris Rogers, who is in his first week representing the North Coast in District 2.

While some 10,000 Pacific Gas & Electricity customers were without power in the immediate aftermath of the quake — particularly within the Eel River Valley, Ferndale, some portions of Fortuna and the city of Rio Dell — damage reports from fire and county officials across the affected area showed no significant damage, McGuire said.

“So far,” said Rogers, “the damage assessments have been positive compared to what you would expect with such a significant earthquake … No catastrophic damage to public infrastructure so far and visually no collapsed buildings.”

In an email sent at 4:29 p.m., Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services spokesperson Catarina Gallardo declined to provide a damage assessment.

“We are still assessing the immediate needs of the community,” she said.

McGuire said that based on his early conversations with local officials, “It’s a miracle that there isn’t more damage and more injuries.”

Speaking at a news conference on international commerce and border security in San Diego, Gov. Gavin Newsom said he had signed off on an emergency declaration that will free up resources, including the National Guard and the use of state facilities, to aid in the recovery.

No injuries, but lots of vertigo

As of 1 p.m., according to Jeff DuVall, Sonoma County’s emergency management director, his emergency response team had not heard of any reported damage within the county.

At the Fourth St. Deli just off Old Courthouse Square in Santa Rosa, owner Neal Mogannam cleared the store when the ground started moving.

“I didn’t feel comfortable in the building,” he recalled two hours later, at the height of the lunch rush. “I’ve still got this vertigo. I don’t feel like myself.”

He wasn’t alone. Connie Freeman, a psychologist at a downtown Santa Rosa school, was working with a student when the earthquake hit.

“I began to feel like I had vertigo. I turned my head trying to see if it was indeed vertigo and then an earthquake alert showed up on my phone.”

She and the student “got under the table and waited.”

Freeman described the earth’s movement as “gentle and rolling,” unlike other earthquakes she’d experienced.

Steve and Christine Krautheim, of Petaluma, have an early December tradition of camping at Doran Regional Park on Bodega Bay.

As soon as they felt the quake, he said, “we said, ‘We need to get out of here. This is not a drill.’”

The Krautheims and the couple they camp with were in their vehicles, heading down the road, when they saw vehicles approaching with red lights.

“We bailed out before anybody told us to.”

They followed tsunami evacuation route signs to elevated ground above the town of Bodega Bay. It was less then an hour, he said, before the tsunami warning was lifted.

“I spent 30 years working for a public agency in Marin,” said Krautheim. “When the first responders tell you to leave, you need to leave.”

Memorable field trip

While no reports of serious injuries emerged throughout the day, there was a close call, at the iconic Gingerbread Mansion in Ferndale, where a class of third graders had arrived to decorate the Christmas tree.

According to Olivia Cobian, the mansion’s proprietor, the children had just walked outside, after wandering throughout the building, when the earthquake hit, sending mirrors, armoires, china and other antiques crashing to the ground, just where students had been a moment earlier.

“I was just so thankful the kids weren’t in the house,” said Cobian, who reported that, while no guests were in the mansion at the time, the bed-and-breakfast lost about half of its tea-time china.

Video shared on CBS News Bay Area also showed damage at the Victorian Inn of Ferndale. A door was off its hinges, and many bottles had fallen from their shelves and broken on the floor of the bar.

“It just made a little mess,” Lowell Daniels, owner of the Inn, told The Press Democrat. “We’re already cleaned up and back in business. My wife and daughter are shining glasses. We’re ready to go.

“We’ve been through a lot of these,” said Daniels. “The rest of the world thinks its horrible, but up here, we’re used to it.”

He wasn’t minimizing the event. “An earthquake of this magnitude can be a big deal — if it hits a certain way,” said Daniels. “And this one didn’t.”

Ferndale resident Dianna Richardson said that while the earthquake “shook very much” in town, the resulting damage was not what she expected.

At her home, the doors that normally stay closed opened and the hung-up photos that usually tilt one way tilted the other. In the driveway, her pickup truck jumped up and down with the rolling movements.

At the Ferndale branch of the Humboldt County Library, where Richardson has worked part time since 1986, fewer books fell than she expected.

“It shook a different direction or something,” Richardson said.

Some of this she attributes to increased safety measures, such as anchoring the book shelves that “dominoed” during the 1992 Cape Mendocino earthquakes. But it also just seemed to not to leave as much wreckage in its path as previous strong earthquakes.

Richardson said she has been picking up fallen books since she got to the branch around 11:15 a.m.., but that’s partially because she is slowly completing the work and waiting to see if an aftershock will knock them over again.

© 2024 The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, Calif.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.