Nevada town struggles to recover after strong quake

(CNN) -- A strong earthquake struck the northeast corner of Nevada on Thursday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, damaging buildings in a small town near the epicenter.

The USGS reported the quake was a magnitude 6 and occurred at a depth of 6.2 miles below the surface. The magnitude was lowered from 6.3 about an hour after the initial report.

The USGS also recorded eight aftershocks between magnitudes 4 and 3 in the hours after the first quake, which hit at 6:16 a.m. PT.

Gov. Jim Gibbons toured the area and cited just three minor injuries.

"I think we were just blessed that Mother Nature struck when it did ... rather than some time later on when the people would be out and about and the sidewalks might have had more people on them when these structures came down," he told The Associated Press.

Elko County, Nevada commissioners declared a state of emergency, the AP reported.

"Almost all of the businesses are shut down. We have no services and no fuel," Commissioner Mike Nannini told AP.

Video footage from CNN affiliate KSL-TV in Salt Lake City, Utah, showed collapsed building fronts and bricks crushing cars in what was described as Wells' historic district. Wells, a town of about 1,500 people, is about 12 miles east-southeast from the epicenter in sparsely populated eastern Nevada.

Sherry Justus, a utility clerk who answered the phone at the Wells, Nevada, city offices Thursday said the quake struck as she was getting ready for work.

"My whole house shook like it was coming off the foundation," she said.

Jane Kelso, who answered the phone at the Motel 6 in Wells, told the AP, "We have cracks in our walls."

Tom Turk, with the Nevada Division of Forestry, told the AP that nearly all of the town's 700 residential structures had some damage.

CNN affiliates in Salt Lake City, about 150 miles from the epicenter, and Boise, Idaho, reported getting calls from residents who felt the temblor.

The USGS told CNN that reports from residents suggest that about 2 million residents felt the quake.

"Definitely a lot of people felt this, and if they were sleeping, they were awoken," said USGS geophysicist Carrieann Bedwell told AP.

In Wendover, Utah, on the Nevada-Utah line, Tammy Wadsworth was ironing clothes at the time of the quake.

"I kept thinking, 'When is it going to quit?' A couple pictures fell off the walls," she told AP. "One of my grandkids ran outside. They didn't know what else to do. It scared them."

A magnitude 6 earthquake is capable of causing destruction to buildings within about 30 miles of its epicenter. E-mail to a friend

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