Ridgecrest is a town in a California desert where the 28,000 residents are used to earthquakes.
The epicenter of Friday’s magnitude 7.1 quake was 11 miles northeast of Ridgecrest, but was felt as far away as Mexico and Las Vegas, the US Geological Survey said.
It came just one day after a magnitude 6.4 tremor that also rocked the Ridgecrest area.
Here is the latest on the two earthquakes:
The injuries
Ridgecrest, the desert town of 28,000, bore the brunt of both quakes’ wrath.
Officials responded to reports of injuries and fires in Kern County, where the town is located. But they didn’t give a specific number of casualties. Kern County Fire Chief David Witt said he wasn’t aware of any fatalities.
In addition to the injuries, much of Ridgecrest and the surrounding areas were plunged into darkness due to power outages.
About 130 residents from Bakersfield and Trona were staying in a temporary shelter, officials said.
The damage
Trona, a town of about 2,000 people, doesn’t have power or running water, the San Bernardino County Fire Department said.
As many as 50 structures were damaged by the magnitude 7.1 tremor Friday night.
Workers had been restoring power from the initial earthquake Thursday when Friday’s quake cut off power again.
The town was briefly cut off after officials shut down a highway connecting Trona to Ridgecrest due to rockslides and cracks after the earthquake, CNN affiliate KTLA reported. Water lines were also damaged, prompting the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver bottled water to Trona.
The aftershocks
There have been more than 4,700 quakes since Thursday, geophysicist John Bellini said.
“They are coming in every 30 seconds, every minute,” he said.
The region has seen an average of one aftershock per minute since Friday’s quake in the southern part of the state, according to the US Geological Survey website.
About 130 residents from Bakersfield and Trona were staying in a temporary shelter, Person said.