sanddun
04-05-2010, 07:31 AM
A powerful earthquake just southeast of Tijuana shook southern California on Sunday afternoon, damaging buildings in border towns and rattling a seismically-sophisticated population as far north as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Chandeliers swayed, homes shook and the earth seemed to slide under the feet of people emerging from Easter church services for well over a minute as the quake rocked states in Mexico and the United States.
The 7.2 quake struck just after 3:30 p.m. local time, and was centered 16 miles south-southwest of Guadalupe Victoria in Baja California, Mexico, and about 108 miles east-southeast of Tijuana, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Carlton Hargrave, 64, was standing in the entryway of Family Style Buffet in Calexico, a California border town, when the quake hit. His restaurant, he said in a telephone interview, was “almost completely destroyed. We’ve got tables overturned, plates broken on the floor.”
“The ceilings caved in. It was big. I mean, it was major,” he said with a shaky voice and the sound of his feet crunching rubble and glass and plate fragments.
Reports from the remote area in Mexico where the quake hit were slow in coming and Mexican Web sites were overloaded in the two hours following the shaking, but an earthquake of that size would probably cause major property damage and perhaps injuries to anything or anyone near its epicenter, experts said.
A reporter in Tijuana for the newspaper Frontera who did not want to give his name said there were no reports of damage or injury there but reporters were awaiting definitive word from the authorities.
El Imparcial, a newspaper in the state of Sonora, south of Arizona, reported cracks in condominium buildings in Mexicali and burst pipes but the damage did not appear severe.
The shaking was particularly acute in San Diego, where the quake set off several alarms and sent the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department out on several calls, according to the San Diego Union Tribune’s Web site.
“We have some reports of scattered property damage,” Ramona Hastings, a sergeant assigned to the watch command at the San Diego Police Department, said in a telephone interview. Among the reports were several burst pipes, including at least one under a house, and damage to a three-story apartment building.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/04/05/world/americas/05quake-map/05quake-map-articleInline.jpg
Chandeliers swayed, homes shook and the earth seemed to slide under the feet of people emerging from Easter church services for well over a minute as the quake rocked states in Mexico and the United States.
The 7.2 quake struck just after 3:30 p.m. local time, and was centered 16 miles south-southwest of Guadalupe Victoria in Baja California, Mexico, and about 108 miles east-southeast of Tijuana, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Carlton Hargrave, 64, was standing in the entryway of Family Style Buffet in Calexico, a California border town, when the quake hit. His restaurant, he said in a telephone interview, was “almost completely destroyed. We’ve got tables overturned, plates broken on the floor.”
“The ceilings caved in. It was big. I mean, it was major,” he said with a shaky voice and the sound of his feet crunching rubble and glass and plate fragments.
Reports from the remote area in Mexico where the quake hit were slow in coming and Mexican Web sites were overloaded in the two hours following the shaking, but an earthquake of that size would probably cause major property damage and perhaps injuries to anything or anyone near its epicenter, experts said.
A reporter in Tijuana for the newspaper Frontera who did not want to give his name said there were no reports of damage or injury there but reporters were awaiting definitive word from the authorities.
El Imparcial, a newspaper in the state of Sonora, south of Arizona, reported cracks in condominium buildings in Mexicali and burst pipes but the damage did not appear severe.
The shaking was particularly acute in San Diego, where the quake set off several alarms and sent the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department out on several calls, according to the San Diego Union Tribune’s Web site.
“We have some reports of scattered property damage,” Ramona Hastings, a sergeant assigned to the watch command at the San Diego Police Department, said in a telephone interview. Among the reports were several burst pipes, including at least one under a house, and damage to a three-story apartment building.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/04/05/world/americas/05quake-map/05quake-map-articleInline.jpg