A magnitude 4.4 earthquake centered in El Sereno rattled the Los Angeles area Monday afternoon.
The quake was felt over a wide swath of Southern California, but there were no immediate reports of damage.
Bottles fall from the shelves of an Alambra Target after an earthquake with an epicenter in El Sereno shook the Southland.
(Karen Kaplan/Los Angeles Times)
The temblor struck at 12:20 p.m. The preliminary epicenter was in El Sereno, about 1,000 feet southwest of Huntington Drive and Collis Avenue.
Seismologist Lucy Jones, a Caltech research associate, said the earthquake occurred on the same overall fault network that produced the 1987 Whittier Narrows magnitude 5.9 earthquake.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the earthquake was on the Puente Hills thrust fault or the Lower Elysian Park thrust fault, or perhaps a secondary system between those two faults, Jones said. Both the Puente Hills thrust fault and the Lower Elysian Park thrust fault are buried and don’t reach the surface of Earth.
“When we’ve tried to image them — which is not easy, right? — … we see a web. We don’t see one clear system. And we see several different strands,” Jones said. “We need to remember this is only a four-and-a-half, and therefore, associating it with a particular fault is always going to be problematic.”
The earthquake did not occur on the Raymond fault, which can be clearly mapped, Jones said.
Many Southern California residents received alerts on their phones warning the quake was coming, another win for the region’s earthquake early warning system.
Pasadena City Hall has water leaking from the building after a 4.4 magnitude earthquake out of El Sereno just after 12pm.
(KTLA)
When a quake struck Bakersfield last week, millions got the alert.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Monday’s temblor was felt across the L.A. basin and as far away as San Diego and Ventura.
Those who have iPhones can get earthquake early warnings by downloading the free MyShake app, developed by UC Berkeley and provided in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which alerts users in California, Oregon and Washington. San Diego County also offers the free SD Emergency app, which includes the ShakeReadySD earthquake early-warning tool.
People who don’t have smartphones or haven’t installed early-warning apps can still get quake alerts on their cellphones — but only for those in which a higher magnitude or higher level of shaking is projected at their location. Those alerts are sent through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, similar to Amber Alerts.