NAPA, Calif., (Reuters) – Authorities in California’s wine country north of San Francisco were scrambling yesterday to reach damaged buildings and restore power in the town of Napa after a 6.0 magnitude earthquake struck before dawn, injuring more than 100 people.
The temblor damaged historic buildings, set some homes on fire and caused power and water outages around picturesque Napa, a famous wine-producing region and tourist destination.
The quake, the biggest in the region in 25 years, jolted many residents out of bed when it hit at 3:20 a.m. (1020 GMT). It was centered 6 miles (10 km) south of the city of Napa.
There were no known fatalities, but three people were seriously injured, including a child who suffered multiple fractures after a fireplace fell on him, local fire battalion chief John Callahan said. Six fires broke out, including one that consumed six mobile homes, he said.
At least 33 buildings in the city of Napa, a city of 77,000, had been “red-tagged,” meaning they were unsafe to enter, said Napa Community Development Director Rick Tooker. Inspectors had accessed about a third of all structures and planned to complete the work on Monday. Napa’s Queen of the Valley Medical Center said it had treated 172 patients injured in the quake.
“They say it went for 50 seconds. It felt like 50 minutes. I was just too terrified to even scream,” said Patricia Trimble, 50, the owner of an antique store. She rushed to her store in central Napa and found the front window blown out, cabinets on their sides and merchandise littering the floor.
California Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency, putting all state resources at the disposal of his Office of Emergency Services. The quake was felt throughout the San Francisco Bay area.
The state, which sits along a series of seismic faults, is forecast to experience a much more powerful earthquake at some point, but scientists do not know when it might come or how strong it would measure, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Don Blakeman, said.
“Usually when people talk about ‘The Big One,’ they’re talking about something in the order of a magnitude 9, which of course is tremendously more powerful” than Sunday’s quake, he said.
DOWNTOWN NAPA CLOSED
Brick facades gave way in the historic section of downtown Napa, located about 50 miles north of San Francisco, and bricks fell off a second floor corner of the courthouse, which showed cracks. On the main street, masonry collapsed onto a car.