Earthquakes shakes part of Southern California coast

<br>LOS ANGELES (AP) _ An earthquake of estimated magnitude-4.6 centered in the Pacific Ocean rattled the Southern California coast on Saturday. <br><br>A nighttime aftershock struck more than eight hours

Sunday, March 17th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6



LOS ANGELES (AP) _ An earthquake of estimated magnitude-4.6 centered in the Pacific Ocean rattled the Southern California coast on Saturday.

A nighttime aftershock struck more than eight hours later and was followed in minutes by an apparently unrelated magnitude-3.2 earthquake in Orange County.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage from any of the temblors.

The Orange County quake, which struck about 9:51 p.m., was centered two miles southwest of Yorba Linda, according to preliminary reports.

``It was just kind of a bang, kind of a jolt. Everything shook,'' said a dispatcher with the Yorba Linda Police Department.

The earlier quake was widely felt along the Southern California coast, from Santa Barbara to Long Beach, and across the entire Los Angeles basin.

The offshore temblor occurred at 1:33 p.m., centered 44 miles south of Ventura in open water due west of Long Beach, according to a preliminary report from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

``Fortunately, the shaking wasn't too bad,'' Susan Hough, a U.S. Geological Survey seismologist, said of the quake, technically classified as light or small.

Ian Fitzgerald, who manages the Santa Barbara Sailing Center, said he was taking a lunch break when he felt the quake.

``It was so light I thought I was imagining it,'' Fitzgerald said.

The temblor, considered a new earthquake and not an aftershock, struck on a system of faults running from the northwest to southeast, roughly parallel to the coast, Hough said.

The area experiences one earthquake of magnitude-4.0 or greater every two years on average. The largest earthquake in the area in recent decades was a magnitude-5.5 in October 1981.
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