August 17, 1999
Web posted at: 10:02 PM EDT (0202 GMT)

SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- A short, sharp earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.0 jolted the San Francisco area during rush hour Tuesday. There were no immediate reports of damage or injury.

The quake struck at 6:06 p.m. (9:06 p.m. EDT) and was centered near Bolinas, a coastal community about 20 miles north of San Francisco along the San Andreas fault, officials with the U.S. Geologic Survey, which monitors earthquake activity worldwide, said.

The quake lasted about 10 seconds.

Don Blakeman, a USGS geophysicist, said the California quake had nothing to do with the quake that devastated Turkey.

Seismologist Bruce Bolt of the University of California, Berkeley, told radio station KCBS that the Bolinas area is where the 1906 earthquake began, but he found no particular significance in that.

Bolt said he didn't expect any damage from Tuesday evening's quake, but he noted there could be some damage from poorly anchored objects or unsound structures.

San Francisco reportedly stopped its public transportation, including BART trains, a routine procedure implemented as a precaution during earthquakes.