A powerful earthquake rocked the Northern California coast early Tuesday, jolting Humboldt County residents awake as it shattered glass, shook homes off foundations, damaged roads and left nearly 60,000 homes and businesses in the rural area without power and many without water.
At least a dozen people were injured.
The magnitude 6.4 earthquake occurred at 2:34 a.m. near Ferndale, a small community about 210 miles northwest of San Francisco and close to the Pacific coast. The epicenter was just offshore at a depth of about 10 miles. Numerous aftershocks followed.
“It felt like my roof was coming down,” said Cassondra Stoner. "When I woke up, the only thing I could think about was, ‘Get the freaking kids.’”
When the ground stopped moving, Stoner's family was fine — a daughter even slept through the racket. But when she showed up to work at Dollar General, she found that tiles had fallen from the ceiling, shelves were toppled and the contents of the discount store were scattered on the floor.
No tsunami was expected, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office tweeted shortly after the quake hit.
Residents in the area known for its redwood forests, scenic mountains and the three-county Emerald Triangle's legendary marijuana crop are accustomed to earthquakes. But many said this was more violent and unnerving than the usual rolling motion they experience.
“You could see the floor and walls shaking,” said Araceli Huerta. “It sounded like a freight train was going through my house.”
Damage to buildings and infrastructure was still being assessed Tuesday afternoon. Two Humboldt County hospitals lost power and were running on generators, but the scale of the damage appeared to be minimal compared to the strength of the quake, according to Brian Ferguson, spokesperson for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES).
Approximately 12 people were reported as suffering injuries, including a broken hip and a head wound, the Humboldt County Sheriff's Office said at a news conference Tuesday morning, which was interrupted by a jarring aftershock. Also, two people died — an 83-year-old and a 72-year-old — because they couldn't get timely care for "medical emergencies” during or just after the quake.
Damage was mostly focused on the small communities of Rio Dell, Ferndale and Fortuna, Cal OES Director Mark Ghilarducci said during a news conference in Sacramento.
Rio Dell, a hamlet of about 3,000 people, was hardest hit by the quake, where at least 15 homes were severely damaged and deemed uninhabitable and 18 others were moderately damaged, officials said after a partial assessment.
The city’s water system was shut down to repair leaks and will be offline for as long as two days, with portable toilets set up at City Hall and water being handed out at the fire house.
A bridge over the Eel River built in 1911, which is the main route into Ferndale, was damaged and closed to traffic, requiring a longer detour through the mountains to reach the quaint Victorian town, where all of Main Street is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Caroline Titus, former owner of the Ferndale Enterprise newspaper, said the quake only broke a few windows on storefronts. At her 140-year-old home, though, plants were knocked over, her coffee bar crashed to the floor, pictures fell off the wall and books tumbled from shelves.
“It’s all just pain-in-the-butt type of damage,” Titus said.
The earthquake occurred in an area known as the Mendocino Triple Junction, where three tectonic plates meet.
“We’re in this moment of geologic time where the most exciting, dynamic area of California happens to be Humboldt County and the adjacent offshore area,” said Lori Dengler, professor emeritus of geology at Cal Poly Humboldt.
