The earthquake in Southern California was also felt in the studios of Colin Cowherd’s daily sports talk show.
Cowherd briefly interrupted his show to observe that an earthquake hit the Los Angeles metropolitan area on Thursday.
As the host was discussing the free agency of NBA superstar Kawhi Leonard, Cowherd quickly shifted course and said: ‘Uh, we are having an earthquake in Los Angeles.
‘I thought somebody was grabbing my desk. I’ve never been in an earthquake, certainly not on the air.
Colin Cowherd was in his studio hosting his daily sports talk show on Fox Sports 1 TV on Thursday when a 6.4 magnitude earthquake hit the Greater Los Angeles region
As the host was discussing the free agency of NBA superstar Kawhi Leonard, Cowherd quickly shifted course and said: ‘Uh, we are having an earthquake in Los Angeles’
Cowherd’s show, The Herd, is broadcast Monday through Friday at noon on Fox Sports 1 TV and on Fox Sports Radio
‘We’ll take a break. We just had a little earth.’
Cowherd’s show, The Herd, is broadcast Monday through Friday at noon on Fox Sports 1 TV and on Fox Sports Radio.
A powerful earthquake jolted Southern California on Thursday, touching off house fires and damaging buildings in a desert town northeast of Los Angeles, but authorities said it has caused only minor injuries.
The 6.4 magnitude quake, the largest in two decades in the area, struck about 113 miles northeast of Los Angeles near the city of Ridgecrest at around 1:30pm EDT, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
The Kern County Fire Department said it was dealing with ‘multiple injuries,’ two house fires, small brush fires and gas leaks.
‘However we feel are going to have the upper hand on this,’ said Kern County Fire Chief David Witt.
‘We don’t know the exact number of injuries but so far they have been minor,’ he said at a briefing.
Ridgecrest Mayor Peggy Breeden said she had never felt a quake ‘like this long rolling’ temblor, adding she was driving in her car when it happened and immediately pulled up her emergency brake.
‘We are used to earthquakes but we’re not used to this significance,’ she told MSNBC.
The quake is the largest in Southern California since the 1994 magnitude 6.6 Northridge earthquake, USGS geophysicist Paul Caruso said.
That quake, which was centered in a heavily populated area of Los Angeles, killed 57 people and caused billions of dollars of damage.
Ridgecrest may not get much respite in the hours and days ahead.
USGS seismologist Lucy Jones said more than 80 aftershocks have hit the area in the hours since the initial quake.
‘We should be expecting lots of aftershocks and some of them will be bigger than the 3s we’ve been having so far,’ Jones told a news conference.
This handout picture obtained courtesy of Rex Emerson taken on July 4, 2019 shows broken bottles and other goods in a store in Lake Isabella, California, after a 6.4 magnitude quake hit Southern California
‘I think the chance of having a magnitude 5…is probably greater than 50-50,’ she said.
The USGS said the quake, initially reported as a magnitude 6.6, was very shallow – only 6.7 miles – which would have amplified its effect.
The temblor, which struck in an area on the edge of Death Valley National Park, was felt throughout Los Angeles, as far north as Fresno, and as far east as Las Vegas, Nevada.
It was even felt south of the border in Mexico, where buildings were evacuated in the towns of Tijuana and Mexicali, according to Baja State officials.
According to European quake agency EMSC, the quake was felt in an area inhabited by some 20 million people.
Chuck Schlie, who was visiting Los Angeles for the first time with his family from St. Louis, said he was lying in bed at his hotel room in nearby Anaheim when he felt rumbling.
‘I thought wow this is really weird. Am I going crazy?’ Schlie said outside the historic TCL Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.
‘If you’ve never experienced it, you think am I out of my mind? Why am I feeling like this?’
James Wilhorn, the manager of Howard’s Mini Mart in Ridgecrest, said his gas station was the only one open in the area because of damage to other gas stations and the Independence Day holiday, and there was a line of 20 cars waiting to fill their tanks.
‘I mopped up over 20 gallons of wine that fell over in addition to the beer, soda and the cooler that fell over. We have several thousand dollars worth of damage,’ Wilhorn said.
The epicenter was very close to Ridgecrest, a town with a population of more than 27,600 in the high desert.
A 6.4 magnitude earthquake that rattled Southern California residents amid their Fourth of July celebrations has caused fires, damaged buildings and sparked rock slides
The Kern County Fire Department said it was working ‘nearly 2 dozens incidents ranging from medical assistance to structure fires (pictured) in and around the city of Ridgecrest’
A video from Ridgecrest showed a large fire in the backyard of a home. Firefighters were seen battling the blaze
This firefighter is seen fully extinguishing the blaze from the home in Ridgecrest
This image shows another angle of the firefighters battling the blaze in Ridgecrest
The earthquake caused rock slides (left) as well as large cracks (right) across roads, officials said
The area has suffered earthquake swarms in the past, including a series of some 2,500 tremors over the course of five weeks in the summer of 1995.
According to poweroutage.us, 5,851 customers were without power in Kern County.
The Kern County Fire Department said the Ridgecrest Regional hospital was being evacuated in response to the quake.
The hospital could not immediately be reached for comment.
Temperatures in the area were expected to climb to nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday, with extremely low humidity, the Weather Channel said.
President Trump said he had been briefed on the earthquake. ‘All seems to be very much under control!’ Trump tweeted.