Magnitude 7.2 quake hits Baja California
A series of earthquakes and aftershocks were felt along the Pacific Coast today. The largest was a 7.2 quake that struck northwestern Mexico’s Baja California at 3:40 PM PDT, about 110 miles (175 km) east-southeast of Tijuana Mexico. The 7.2 quake (revised upward from an earlier estimate of 6.9) was felt across Baja California, Arizona, and Southern California and rolled for 30 seconds in San Diego.
Nine minutes later, an unrelated magnitude 4.1 quake rattled windows in Santa Rosa, CA, north of San Francisco.
Los Angeles had swinging chandeliers and sloshing swimming pools. Tweets on Twitter from Phoenix, AZ reported the quake.
At least five aftershocks followed the Baja California quake (USGS map), the largest of which had a magnitude of 5.1.
CNN has videos from the quakes.
According to the LA Times, 20 million people felt the Baja California quake (also called the Mexicali quake), and Caltech says that aftershocks are likely. A 4.1 magnitude quake that hit Santa Monica, California at about 4:10 PM PDT is related to the Mexicali quake, according to the USGS.
(Note added April 5, 2010: Around 80% of the businesses in downtown Calexico (that’s in California) have been red-tagged and cannot be reopened to the public until inspections of the structures have been made. As for Mexicali, it appears to be slowly returning to normal. Normalcy is returning to both sides of the border.)
-Bill at
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