LOS ANGELES – As wildfires raging in the mountains cast an orange glow behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline, Southern California residents were jolted awake Thursday by another reminder of Mother Nature's might.
It was an all-too-familiar feeling for locals when a 4.7 magnitude earthquake rattled the Los Angeles area, unleashing boulders onto a Malibu road, shaking Santa Monica's 1909 wooden pier and waking some people from bed. No injuries or damages were immediately reported.
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The quake happened as the region has been dealing with three major wildfires burning east of Los Angeles that torched dozens of homes and forced thousands to evacuate. The blazes erupted during a blistering heat wave that has just subsided.
“It’s a garden-variety Southern California earthquake,” California Institute of Technology seismologist Lucy Jones said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said it was centered 4 miles (7 kilometers) north of Malibu and was about 7 miles (11 kilometers) below the surface. The jolt was felt as far as 45 miles (72 kilometers) away in Orange County, where people reported items moving in their homes. It was followed by several smaller aftershocks.
Officials around the region said authorities were surveying for damage, but had not found anything major.
Malibu Councilmember Bruce Silverstein said he has lived in the community for 13 years and this was the hardest quake yet, but nothing broke.
“Our house shook for about two or three seconds. I was concerned the windows were going to pop,” Silverstein said.
A camera at the 115-year-old Santa Monica Pier, about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Malibu, showed several seconds of intense shaking during the quake. Several morning newscasts also captured the earthquake live as cameras shook in television studios.
A crew was working on clearing large boulders that rolled onto Malibu Canyon Road, near the epicenter, KTLA-TV reported
The earthquake occurred closest to the Malibu fault, but was also near the Anacapa fault, Jones said. Earthquakes below magnitude 5.0 are too small to be definitively associated with large faults that are mapped at the earth’s surface.
Rene Vasquez, manager at The Country Kitchen breakfast place in Malibu, said the shaking lasted a few seconds and kitchen staff ducked outside as a precaution.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Vasquez said. “Thank God nothing fell.”
At a Starbucks on the Malibu coast, surfer Albert Daniel was drinking coffee and wondered if the glass ceiling might come crashing onto him. Afterward, he was hoping for some big waves.
“It's actually pretty calm," Daniel said. “We did get a bunch of sets coming in but they were very small.”
Trudy Novicki, who was visiting from San Clemente, was about to meditate on the balcony of her hotel room when she felt the shake.
“I thought a truck had run into the building,” she said. Her daughter, who was visiting from Florida, said it was her first earthquake and thought it was a train.
People, including several celebrities, took to social media to post they were awakened by a jolt.
Hotel heiress and media personality Paris Hilton wrote on X, “That #Earthquake was scary.” Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian posted: “Damn that was a big one.”
Some residents said they were alerted by the state’s earthquake early warning system.
A number of quakes have been felt in the area in recent months, including a 4.4 magnitude earthquake in August that rattled nerves from the Los Angeles area to San Diego, swaying buildings, knocking items off shelves and setting off car alarms. The temblor caused a pipe to burst at the ornate 1927 Pasadena City Hall building.
In February, a magnitude 4.6 earthquake was felt in Malibu that occurred south of Thursday’s earthquake.
Thursday’s event was the 14th earthquake sequence of magnitude 4.0 in Southern California this year. While this is above the average of eight to 10 per year in the past few decades, it’s too soon to tell whether the increased activity is statistically significant, said Jones, the Caltech seismologist. The previous highest number was 13 earthquakes of this size in 1988.
The recent bout of quakes does not indicate whether a larger, more destructive earthquake is arriving soon, but residents should be prepared for more aftershocks. There is a 1 in 20 chance that another earthquake of 4.7 magnitude or higher will occur, U.S. Geological Survey geophysicist Morgan Page told the Los Angeles Times.
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Taxin reported from Orange County. Associated Press writer Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco also contributed.