Thousands of Southern Californians reported feeling the magnitude 4.4 earthquake, which struck at 12:20 p.m. just 2.5 miles south, southeast of Highland Park and just west of Pasadena.
The quake was felt from L.A.’s westside all the way to the Inland Empire, according to KTLA viewers, many of whom sent us their harrowing videos.
In much of the footage, the temblor, which was originally reported as a magnitude 4.7 before getting downgraded to magnitude 4.4, people and their pets are seen scrambling as their homes visibly rattle.
Outside, many home surveillance cameras captured the intensity of the shifting ground as the cameras themselves began shaking for several seconds.
The quake also hit as more than 500,000 Los Angeles Unified School District students started the new school year. The district requires adults and students to run through earthquake drills – drop, cover and hold on – once a month.
In Pasadena, at the city’s historic city hall building, water was seen cascading off the roof after the quake caused a water pipe to break as employees evacuated the building.
Prominent Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones spoke to KTLA about the most common damage sustained by earthquakes in Southland.
“Water pipes in general are one of our biggest weaknesses in Southern California,” she said. “The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has tried to move toward seismic resilient water pipes, but it’s not something that generally goes through because water companies are small and diverse, and we don’t have any unified management of that issue.”
The Los Angeles Fire Department went into “earthquake mode” after the shaking subsided, with fire personnel from all the 106 LAFD neighborhood stations deployed to survey their districts in search of damage to critical infrastructure or “areas of local concern.”
Margaret Stewart of the LAFD told KTLA there had not been any “reports of extensive damage anywhere.”