A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck northern California early Tuesday (March 20), leaving two dead and more than 70,000 people without power.
The quake was recorded around 2:30 a.m. local time (7:30 a.m. GMT) in the Pacific Ocean, about 40 kilometers southwest of the port city of Eureka, in Humboldt County, the US Geological Survey said.
Then several aftershocks were recorded. No tsunami warning was issued.
According to the Humboldt Sheriff’s Office, two people died during and after the earthquake “due to medical emergencies” and eleven people were injured. The identity of the victims was not disclosed.
Around 73,000 people in the region were without power in the afternoon, according to the specialist website Power Outage. “There is no electricity in the entire district,” said the Humboldt emergency service on Twitter.
Roads were closed due to landslides and a bridge in Ferndale was closed due to cracks. Pictures shared on social media show broken windows and objects lying on the ground in homes and businesses.
“The shaking was pretty intense,” Daniel Holsapple, 33, of the city of Arcata, told Portal. He says he grabbed his pet cat and ran outside in the dark after being woken up by the earthquake in the middle of the night.
“You couldn’t see anything that was going on. All you could hear was the faint sound of the house’s foundation vibrating,” he said.
In the city of San Francisco, about 350 kilometers south of the epicenter, the earthquake was felt to be weaker without causing any damage.
Earthquakes are geological events with the potential to destroy entire cities and cause large numbers of deaths. But how do they even come about?
The explanation lies in the movement of tectonic plates, blocks floating on top of the mantle, one of the layers found inside the Earth. The movement of these plates can cause vibration.
California lies at the top of the North American Plate, near where it meets the Pacific Plate. As a result, earthquakes are common in the region.