August 30, 2012– CALIFORNIA – The
southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of
declaring a state of emergency after a swarm of earthquakes rattled
nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to
close, the mayor said on Wednesday. It is uncommon for quake-hardy
California cities to declare emergencies due to tremors, but Brawley
mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it
has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage. The
cluster of relatively small quakes, which are caused by water and other
fluids moving around in the Earth’s crust, began on Saturday evening and
climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the U.S.
Geological Survey. The tremors were continuing on Wednesday and
geologists say there have been hundreds in total. Nava said leaders in
Brawley, a city of 25,000 residents south of the state’s inland Salton
Sea and 170 miles (275 km) southeast of Los Angeles, declared a local
emergency late on Tuesday. Officials with surrounding Imperial County
made a similar declaration on Wednesday. Nineteen mobile homes were
knocked off their blocks and their residents forced out, Nava said. The
auditorium at Brawley Union High School has been damaged and closed off,
and the National Beef slaughter plant in Brawley has been temporarily
shut down due to damage, he said. Local businesses have suffered
millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying
away, Nava said. But he could not give an exact account of quake-related
losses. The Red Cross and local government agencies will offer services
to residents on Friday and Saturday at a local center. The emergency
declaration allows Brawley to receive more assistance from Imperial
County, Nava said. At one point, about 10,000 residents in the city were
without power, and the quakes have also caused water line disruptions,
Nava said. “When you don’t have an AC or running water, it’s just not a
good thing in this weather,” he said. Jeanne Hardebeck, research
seismologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, said earlier this week that
the cluster of quakes is not a sign that a larger temblor is imminent.
–Reuters
August 30, 2012 – CALIFORNIA- The 4.1
earthquake that jolted Yorba Linda on Wednesday afternoon appears to be
an aftershock of the cluster of quakes that hit the region earlier this
month, seismologists said. The jolted area included southeastern Los
Angeles County, Orange County and the Inland Empire. The quake occurred
in about the same location of an earthquake doublet, two 4.5 quakes that occurred on Aug. 7 at 11:23 p.m. and Aug. 8 at 9:33 a.m. The area was also hit by a 4.0
quake on June 14. Wednesday’s quake, which hit at 1:31 p.m., was
located near the center point of the magnitude-5.5 Chino Hills
earthquake that reverberated through the Los Angeles Basin in the summer
of 2008, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told The Times.
Wednesday’s quake appeared to be located in the “Yorba Linda trend,” a
seismic area identified by Caltech geophysicist Egill Hauksson in 1990,
that might be a buried fault. Many who felt the quake said it was
relatively mild. At Vinjon’s Kennel in Yorba Linda, the quake hit just
as Carisa Feeney, 22, was giving a bath to a year-and-a-half-old boxer
mix. When the quake delivered its single strong jolt, the dog leaped up
in the tub –- and both quickly ran outside. “I’m pretty much covered in
water,” Feeney said. Nancy Ferguson, who owns SGO Designer Glass in Old
Town Yorba Linda, said, “We had a big jolt, just for a few seconds, then
everything just kind of swayed.” Ferguson, who has hundreds of pieces
of glass on display in her store, said she holds her breath every time
there’s an earthquake. “But nothing fell over today, so we’re feeling
pretty lucky,” she said. It is unlikely that the earthquake swarm that
has hit Imperial County with hundreds of quakes since the weekend is
related to Wednesday’s quake in Yorba Linda, Jones said. –LA Times
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