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Subscribe to RSSUpdated at 11:58 p.m. ET: A rash of up to 70 moderate earthquakes rattled Southern California on Sunday, shaking an area from rural Imperial County to the San Diego coast and north into the Coachella Valley.
According to the USGS, the largest quake was 5.5-magnitude that rattled Brawley, Calif., small Imperial County farming town, just before 2 p.m.
A 5.3 magnitude quake struck at 12:31 p.m. about three miles north-northwest of Brawley, according to Paul Caruso, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey. It was followed minutes later by a 4.9 magnitude quake.
The epicenters of the bigger earthquakes were 11 to 12 miles from Imperial, Calif., and 15 to 16 miles from El Centro, Calif., the USGS reported.
Read the story at NBC 7 San Diego
Several glasses and a bottle of wine crashed to the floor and shattered at Assaggio, an Italian restaurant in Brawley, said owner Jerry Ma. The shaking was short-lived but intense, he said.
"It felt like there was quake every 15 minutes. One after another. My kids are small and they're scared and don't want to come back inside," said Mike Patel, who manages Townhouse Inn & Suites in Brawley. A TV came crashing down and a few light fixtures broke inside the motel, Patel said.
A Brawley Police Department dispatcher said several downtown buildings sustained minor damage. No injuries were reported.
The USGS said more than 100 aftershocks struck the same approximate epicenter, about 16 miles north of El Centro. Some shaking was felt along the San Diego County coast in Del Mar, some 120 miles from the epicenter, as well as in the Coachella Valley, southern Orange County and parts of northern Mexico.
Some shaking was felt on the coast in Del Mar, some 120 miles from the epicenter, as well as in southern Orange County and parts of northern Mexico.
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The quakes pushed 20 mobile homes at a trailer park off their foundations, displacing the families that lived in them, said Maria Peinado, a spokeswoman for the Imperial County Emergency Operations Center.
Sporadic power outages affecting 2,500 Imperial Irrigation District customers also prompted authorities to evacuate some patients from one of the county's two hospitals.
No injuries were reported.
Residents across San Diego County reported feeling the quakes in places including downtown San Diego, Mission Valley, Santee and Chula Vista. No injuries were reported.
San Diego State University geology expert Pat Abbott told NBC 7 San Diego that Sunday’s earthquakes were in the middle of the Brawley Seismic Zone, famous for swarms of quakes. He said he expected aftershocks.
“[The Brawley Seismic Zone] is a broad zone with lots of little faults,” Abbott explained.
“This area has clearly activated. We will likely experience swarms of 3, 4 and 5-magnitude [earthquakes] but they are not likely to increase in intensity. Of course, there are no guarantees on this, but history says they likely won’t get bigger – that we will experience more of the same or smaller quakes,” he added.
NBCSanDiego.com and The Associated Press contributed to this story.
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I lived out there and can remember the quakes we had back in the early 60's.
Wonder why this didn't show up on any networks until today, I will be calling Mom and my brothers concerning the quake. I will also be calling my cuz just outside New Orleans to find out how things are going there.
In the mean time, the USGS is going WOW, did ya feel those.??? Admit it, y'all have No Earthly idea how to predict Earthquakes.!!! No pun intended...!
Those fault lines that are causing these small quakes are the small ones breaking off of the main one "the San Andreas". The San Andreas is due to snap and loose its grip all at once one day because it hasnt lost too much of pressure against the Pacifific and North American plates since 1906. It is gaining trillions of tons of pressure and is going to blow anyday or any second now. The geologist that work for my company in North Dakota are from Cali because of economy issues and tell me all about it at breakfast all the time becaue im so interested in how the Earths crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core works. The tiny faults are not anything. When that big one goes, say good bye to LA and your actors because it will disupt the small faults and maybe start a massive volcano in the eastern Cali. It will be massive. Sorry Hollywood, at least we wont be hearing about Lndsey Lohan getting drunk anymore. Cali will not fall into the ocean but will experience panic, aftershocks, psunamis, aftershocks fires and a massice volcano. There will be no excape, just for the people in the northern part. I dont want it to happen but it will any time. The fault line is gaining pressure everyday. Think of it as a person stick more and more dynamite an a pile until that pile gets bigger and bigger. Please be prepared and may G*d or whoever you believe in bless our hearts.
A big one is coming for Ca.
Maybe it will get rid of the south of the boarder garbage that is slowly killing Ca.
Bottom line here is, All the Sheep herders in Nevada "WILL" have Ocean Front Property.!
There are more sheep in cali then here in Nevada,cattle are easier to run on the ranges here.
All that shaking was just the footprints of millions of illegals flocking across the border nearby.....
Guess the tax burden is becoming too much. For a "broke state" things seem to be breaking apart slowly - I am certain Ms. Pelosi will have some sort of profound statement to make re: how this is Bush's fault.
Those of you wishing to put this in perspective need to go here: http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ .
This is a graphic site showing earthquakes, worldwide, in a nice, easy to follow format.
There are also links underneath the map to useful things like headlines.
Dominating the map at present is a 7.7 magnitude quake- but it's in the Sea of Okhotsk (near the Kamchatka Peninsula).
Looking back into geological history, it's rather....small- yet it dwarfs what's happening in California.
The Richter Scale is not linear, but exponential- so an earthquake measuring 6 on the Richter Scale is has ten times more shaking amplitude than one measuring five. In short, the earthquake at 7.7 was about 100 times more violent than what Brawley experienced.
The big event earthquake-wise apparently took place at the end of the Permian- during an event called "The Great Dying"- which makes all biblical prophecies pale in comparison to the reality of a mass extinction which took the planetary biome some ten million years to recover from.
There's a good chance there were one or more asteroidal impacts, huge methane clathrate meltdowns, and a few other little events- including an area about half the size of the United States fracturing and releasing a sea of lava that lasted a rather long time in geological terms.
That happened on the side of the planet opposite the largest impact as a result of shockwave convergence- the entire mantle of the planet rang like some hellish bell, and the resulting earthquakes extinguished more than 2/3 of all chordates.
There were waves moving through land masses that were more than 100' tall in places- and moving at hundreds of miles an hour.
This tectonic event has no recent parallel.
This event was so profound that it remains the only mass extinction of insects- and some 96% of all aquatic species died too.
The picayune earthquakes in SoCal are a non-event by comparison- even the "Big One" will remain a mere tremor on any chart encompassing the P-Tr event.
Be grateful.
FeO2--I remember learning about the Permian Extinction--and the place in--I think Russia--where the rip with the lava pouring out was. Fascinating!
I moved out of CA 14 years ago. I lived there since I was 5 years old with the exception of a couple of years in St Louis MO. In 1971 a tornado warning went off. It touched down in Carbondale IL. Two days later I was back in CA. I prefer earthquakes to tornado's but prefer the high heat of AZ over CA & MO. I now live in AZ. I would much rather deal with the heat then earthquakes and tornado's
LA: Overcrowding, smog, 2 hour long traffic jams, overinflated cost of living, illegal aliens taking over, uncontrolled government debt, earthquakes, gang violence, non-gang violence...
Where I live: None of the above, mountains, rivers, farms, 4.3 percent unemployment, skiing, water sports, fishing, hunting all in a prestine environment. Yeh, I think I will move to LA. You bet. Folks that like LA, please do us favor...stay there.
BTW Having four seasons a year is much better than having one. Variety IS the spice of life.
My oldest son lives in San Diego, and I really wonder why he still lives there with his family? Don't the residents living in that part of the country believe in the findings of geological scientists!? This to me is serious, and I'm thinking, like so many others, that its just a matter of time before something major happens - And I'm not talking about 500 years from now!
FNote: I wish all of you who are ragging on each other, would stay on topic - This site gives all of us a golden opportunity to weigh in with our concerns - If not that, then maybe I'm the one displaced here!?
Florida and the Republicans have a sleazy history
You mean like what you wrote there?
Earth quakes happen, hurricanes happen, tornadoes, there is a natural disaster for every region. I would live on the cost if I could find a new job and afford to fly my kids to see their dad but maybe some day. I think I would rather have an earthquake than tornado and earthquakes. I live in Missouri and we have had both.
arizona and nevada beach front property for sale. beat the rush before california slides into the pacific.
I heard Chris Cristie was in San Diego yesterday...coincidence?
because you hate fat people......rosie odonnel....micheal moore.....they are huge fat white people
Aaaaaaargh................It's SOCAL island.....ahoy all ye pirate hookers.
I lived in Redondo Beach in the late 80's, went through the 6.1 Whittier quake, for two weeks we had "after shocks from 5.5 and so on...." that I personally would call "quakes", now many years later they call em "quakes"??? cuz IMHO, thats what they are.... bout time!!!
Remeber how Califorians made a joke about our Capital getting hit. Well guess what, deal with it because of your heart felt comments east coast doesn't care. If you choose to live there it you problem and again DEAL WITH IT.
Harry Reid keeps praying for a west coast port in Nevada.
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
Reunite Gondwanaland!
It's these little ones, not the Big One, that'll start the cascade to complete collapse. We can excuse an inadequate response to the Big One by blaming its magnitude. But when you get a series of little ones, the cracks in the system really start to show.
The Great Subprime Mortgage Scam has left too many of us unemployed, underemployed, & broke. Many can't even pay for insurance, let alone for the damage of a natural catastrophe, even if it's a little one. Between bailouts, free R&D, & tax cuts for the rich, the government's broke too. Those rich folk aren't going to spend their money on losers like us, so off we go to the "evacuation centers" (Americans don't go to refugee camps).
Fear is a great way to control people, so we've been carefully groomed to fear strangers. Now there's whole camps, uh, I mean "centers" full of strange folks with nothing, & by definition "losers". There'll be violent outbreaks as vigilantes go for the strangers, regulators deal with vigilantes, the police try to keep a lid on in spite of budget cuts (no, the rich aren't going to help losers). But these are all little ones, not a coup, revolution, or civil war.
Of course, there's alwasy disease in the camps, uh, centers. So there'll be outbreaks of disease, & maybe even an epidemic or 2, but little ones. Not a plague.
Can't let aliens take our jobs of course, so the evacuees will be out of work. The tax base shrinks, so even if the government could help, there's no money to do so. It's a vicious circle of reduced revenues, unemployment rises, so the tax base shrinks, leading to reduced revenues... Since taxing the rich is out of the question, eventually the government's income falls below the amount needed to service the interest on the national debt, & the U.S. ceases to exist. Beyond that, the future is too grim to contemplate.
And every time, we'll all breathe a huge sigh of relief because it wasn't "The Big One".
to fen 02 and rah 13 and to the fellow at the beginning who mentioned the sardines happening before the japan and now the whales and dolphines traveling closer to shore, the oceans expell gases also dah and right before events listen to the earth and animals, especially the birds, new zealand, japan the equadorian volcano spewing , and now the quakes in cali wake up people, we should have the best prepared nation in the world, where is our national fire drill, the recent diseasters were covered shortly by the media then nothing only good samaritians helped these comunities which was a drop in the bucket to what they need, look at haiti, all the countries need to help get these people birth control and off that island, we need more medical trained staff period, when you are short handed it is shameful. hopefully they learned from katrina and have the national guard in places close and people take heed to the weather and earth changes, people were snookered the night of charlie and many didnt pay attention to the weather and were crying in their hotel rooms what should we do the windows are bulging, kids need to have a serious survival skills class in many areas which they just don't get, lots have the soccer ball mom mentality, read most of these sorry posts and want to seach for some serious conversation, most of these people have not witnessed death or seen blood or heard the cries of pain. They need to take a tour of their local hospitals as a prerequite to graduating. have a great day
What you are saying is, If there is a major disaster, we need to learn how to bend over and Kiss our a** goodbye. There never will be and is imposible to predick Mother Nature, plain and simple. The Best thing is to live as good a life as possible and hope Mother Nature passes you by. I, bet all those thousands of Japaneese from that Suinamie that lost there lives, wished they had lived inland. The only way to avoid Naure is to die at birth, other than that every spot on Earth is a possible Disaster humans must face. But if you are dumm enough to live in Natures path, be it Earthquake, Tornado, Hurricane etc.....Learn how to bend over!
The Big one is comeing. Las Wages, Nevada, will be a Beach city when it comes. Hover Dam will wash everything down to the Border, and all the elegal aliens will swiftly be carried home. The Mountains between Ca, and Nevada will be the New Catalina Iland, only larger. Millions of years ago, or thousands, that area was under water. I, as a child picked up Shark teeth out near Bakersfield Ca.
It's the RNC and Romney doing this, If they get California to sink into the Pacific Obama will be deprived of the 55 Electoral College votes and the republicans win. Watch for the new Obama super pac ad on this in the near future - the republican can't be allowed to get away with this stuff.
The end is at hand November 2012
Apparently by reading these posts here from People who live in LA...I cant understand why there is so much smog still there? Arent you people working on that? Ugh.....over on the East Coast I cannot remember seeing any type of smog lately. Not even by the New York skyline...you guys arent doing your jobs helping Mom Earth as much as we do. Glad I live here. I would take hurricanes, blizzards, ice storms and such moreso better than any earthquakes anyday. They happen without any warnings, you have no time to think during those.
Californias new name....... Mexicalifornia Island.
Anyone concerned about San Onofre nuclear power plant in San Diego? The plant has problems as S. California people know, and has been prohibited from operating.
Does anyone know what these 'earthquake swarms' are doing to the plant? Does anyone care?
The BIG ONE may turn out to be just like the coast of Northern Japan.