A rural section of Northern California shook Wednesday morning when a preliminary magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck — the most powerful to hit the area in nearly nine decades — yet authorities reported no damage or injuries in the immediate aftermath.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the quake’s epicenter was located approximately 7 miles (12 kilometers) northwest of Willits, an agricultural town in Mendocino County. The tremor struck at 8:10 a.m. Pacific Time and was centered about 50 miles (80 kilometers) inland from the coastal city of Fort Bragg, at a depth of roughly 5 miles (8 kilometers). Shaking was felt across a wide area, including Fort Bragg itself.
Mendocino County, which is dotted with small farming communities, sits about 140 miles (225 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.
At Club Calpella Restaurant in Calpella — a town roughly 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the epicenter — employee Brie Leon had just unlocked the doors for the day when the building began to shake, sending plates and liquor bottles rattling.
“I had just turned the open sign on and went back into the kitchen, and that’s when it happened,” Leon said. “It almost felt like something hit the building.”
Leon said the quake knocked picture frames from the walls and sent bottles tumbling off shelves both inside the restaurant and in the adjacent stockroom. She and her coworkers quickly cleaned up the mess before opening for the breakfast crowd.
“It wasn’t a big, big quake, but things went everywhere,” she said.
At Cafe One in Fort Bragg, employee Andrea Medina also felt the tremor. “Things were shaking,” she said. “But it’s done, not too strong.”
Fawnell Dale, a dispatch supervisor with the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office in Ukiah, described the shaking as mild and confirmed that no reports of damage or injuries had come in.
Veteran California seismologist Lucy Jones noted that this was the largest earthquake to strike the region in close to 90 years, pointing out that the area does not sit on a major fault line.
“The area is not without earthquakes, but they’re usually smaller than this,” Jones said. She added that while aftershocks are expected, they will “probably stay on the low side.”
Within an hour of the main quake, three additional tremors — each below a magnitude of 2.7 — were recorded near the same epicenter.
The California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services reported that nearly 657,000 earthquake early warning alerts were pushed out through the MyShake App to users across Northern California. The office said it had not received any damage or injury reports but was working with local authorities to assess the full impact of the quake.
