Strong quake strikes off California, tsunami warning canceled

Audio By Carbonatix

By Abhirup Roy, Andrew Hay

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -A powerful earthquake of magnitude 7 hit off the coast of a sparsely populated area of northern California on Thursday, prompting coastal towns to evacuate low-lying areas amid a tsunami warning that was later canceled. 

No deaths or injuries were reported. There were no reports of major damage, though authorities said they needed time to check across the impacted area.

The National Weather Service said that the tsunami warning that extended along 500 miles (800 km) of the California and Oregon coasts was called off about 90 minutes after the earthquake struck at 10:44 a.m. Pacific Time (1:44 p.m. ET/1844 GMT). 

The quake, which hit at a shallow depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), was centered about 39 miles (63 km) west of the town of Ferndale, a sparsely populated portion of the northern California coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said.       

In Ferndale, a town of about 1,400 people, residents and business owners were cleaning up broken crockery and merchandise after the quake struck. 

“It was a big quake, it made you evacuate the building as fast as you could,” said Troy Land, a member of the Ferndale’s Volunteer Fire Department, who also owns a hardware store and said lumber and cans of paint went tumbling across the shop’s floor.        

Just north of Ferndale in Eureka, a coastal community in Humboldt County, fire department official Talia Flores said there were no injuries or major structural damage reported, though some stores lost merchandise off the shelves.

In San Francisco, where the quake was not felt, hospitality worker Nicole Steinberg, 25, said she was grabbing a coffee when an alert about the possible tsunami was sent to her phone, along with all the other patrons around her. 

“I got a call from dad asking me to find higher ground immediately,” Steinberg said. “But no one else was freaking out too much. I took a while to decide whether to go back to the office or not. I decided to go to the Salesforce Park, which is higher up, and I waited there for an update.”    

Some 4.7 million residents of California and Oregon had been under the tsunami warning before it was canceled, the National Weather Service said.  

The City of Berkeley Police Department issued an evacuation order for parts of the city on the San Francisco Bay, but later sent an alert to residents saying that “no tsunami danger presently exists.” 

In northern California, the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office downgraded its evacuation warning for a tsunami to “situational awareness” in low-lying areas.  

California Governor Gavin Newsom said that he was concerned about damage in northern California, and that he had signed a state of emergency declaration that would facilitate assistance for the impacted areas.

(Reporting by Abhirup Roy in San Francisco and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Additional reporting by Ann Saphir in Berkeley, California, Brad Brooks in Colorado, Brendan O’Brien in Chicago, Rajveer Singh Pardesi, Urvi Dugar and Shivani Tanna in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)