PASO ROBLES, Calif. – An earthquake rocked California’s central coast Monday and shook the state from Los Angeles to San Francisco, collapsing old downtown buildings in this small town and killing at least two people in the rubble.
The 11:16 a.m. quake – its magnitude measured at 6.5 – pitched the roof of Paso Robles’ 1892 clock tower building into the street, crushing a row of parked cars in this San Luis Obispo County town about 20 miles east of the epicenter. More than 40 other buildings were damaged.
It was the first deadly earthquake since the 6.7-magnitude temblor that hit Northridge in 1994, and the most powerful to strike California since a 7.1 quake rocked the desert near Joshua Tree more than four years ago. No one was killed in the 1999 quake.
The main shock Monday was centered in a sparsely populated area about 11 miles north of the coastal town of Cambria. It was immediately followed by at least 50 aftershocks larger than 3.0, the biggest of which was estimated at 4.7, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake shook the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, the estate of the legendary publisher William Randolph Hearst. The castle – a particularly popular tourist attraction this time of its year because of its Hearst family Christmas ornaments – reported no injuries and no immediate signs of any serious damage but was evacuated as a precaution.
The quake also rocked the federal courthouse in San Francisco, 165 miles to the northwest of the epicenter, and sent the building’s upper floors swaying for about 30 seconds. People in downtown Los Angeles, 185 miles southeast, felt a sustained rolling motion.
“It was pretty sharp,” said Sharyn Conn, receptionist at the oceanside Cypress Cove Inn in Cambria, population 6,200. “It really went on and on. I just got everyone under the door frames and rode it out.”
In Paso Robles, a town of 25,000 people in a region dotted with wineries and horse ranches, searchers dug through the debris of the collapsed row of stores in the clock-tower building, pulling apart piles of bricks and mangled wood with their hands, shovels and heavy equipment. The owners of three cars damaged in the rubble were still unaccounted for.
The quake opened cracks on Highway 1, and state crews were checking cracking and buckling on Highway 46, but both routes remained open, the Highway Patrol said. A rock slide closed a rural road.
About 10,000 homes and businesses were without power in the San Luis Obispo area, said John Nelson, spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric.
The quake struck in a known fault zone on a series of faults that run parallel to the San Andreas Fault, said Lucy Jones, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey office in Pasadena.
The last one of a similar size in the area was in 1952, said Ross Stein of the USGS in Menlo Park.
Copyright ©2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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