A powerful earthquake rocked Southern California yesterday, shaking buildings from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and Phoenix and knocking an Amtrak train off its tracks.
The temblor, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, robbed 90,000 people of power, knocked 20 mobile homes off their foundations and cracked a highway bridge.
But the quake – the most powerful to strike California since a 7.3-magnitude temblor in 1992 – caused no more serious damage or injuries as it was centered in the Mojave Desert.
“Thank God it took place in a remote area where there appears to be no tremendous damage or personal injuries,” Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan said.
In 1994, a 6.7-magnitude quake hit the Northridge section of his city, killing 72 people and causing $25 billion in damage.
Yesterday’s earthquake, which struck at 2:45 a.m. local time, was centered 32 miles north of Joshua Tree, a town 100 miles east of Los Angeles.
“It just threw my body back and forth as I ran down the hallway,” Dick Dale said from his home in Joshua Tree.
Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, en route from Chicago to Los Angeles, derailed in the Mojave Desert near Ludlow, more than 125 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
But the passenger cars remained upright and only four of the 155 riders on the 25-car train were injured.
“Our saving grace was, we were following a freight train,” Glenn Morton, the train’s conductor, said. “We were going 60 mph instead of the 80 mph we normally would do through here.”
All the homes in a Ludlow mobile home park were knocked off their foundations.
Late yesterday and early today, two small earthquakes hit Taiwan, a month after a 7.2-magnitude quake killed more than 2,300 people and caused an estimated $9.2 billion in damage there.
There were no immediate reports of casualties from the latest temblors.
In August, a 7.4 quake killed at least 17,000 people in Turkey.