San Francisco earthquake: Buildings shake and folks ‘jolted’ as tremor felt throughout bay
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The view from the hill in San Francisco hit by an earthquake today (stock image)
An earthquake shook San Francisco. People reported buildings shaking and being roused from their sleep.
The magnitude 3.5 earthquake was “felt in large parts of the bay,” according to Dr. Judith Hubbard of Cornell Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.
Seismic maps show it occurred 11 miles south of the large northern California city. AccuWeather reported that it hit just after 6 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time, or 2 p.m. GMT.
A local resident tweeted that she felt the tremor in the South of Market (SoMa) neighborhood of San Francisco and was awakened by it.
@jamiedsongs tweeted, “I felt it in SoMa. A jolt and a tremor. I *just* fell asleep!”
Did you feel the earth tremble? Are you affected by the quake? Email webnews@mirror.co.uk
The place of the quake
Journalist Susan Dyer Reynolds tweeted that “the quake felt stronger here in west San Francisco.”
But she added: “I was born and raised here so the under-five earthquakes don’t upset me too much (if you were here for the 1989 quake, you know how a ‘big’ feels like). The aftershocks are scary though.”
@TatjanaOdineca said it “felt like the wall of the building had been hit by a giant ball”.
@clintcardoza7 wrote: “My dog and I felt a strong jolt in San Francisco. Very scary and strong jerk!”
The quake spread across the entire bay
Earthquake monitor EMSC has shared a map showing “eyewitness-reported local shaking and damage levels.”
The affected region was reported to be the San Francisco Bay Area and the depth of the quake was 9 km.
@HeezNews tweeted, “6am earthquake alert felt in south San Francisco,” while @ElJaguarVR wrote, “It was felt here in San Francisco less than 2 minutes ago. Strong jerk.”
@jcb10 said it was “a sudden jerk and three seconds of shaking”.
@CryptoMrW joked, “I just woke up from my first ever earthquake in San Francisco. I’m going back to Ohio where the ground stays still and people are moving.”
The San Andreas Fault is nearby and was the origin of the famous 1906 San Francisco earthquake that killed more than 3,000 people and destroyed over 80% of the city.
A 6.1 magnitude earthquake hit the northern Japanese city of Aomori today.
Fortunately, no tsunami warning was issued and Japanese media reported no damage or injuries.
The quake in Japan occurred at a depth of 20 km and occurred at 18:18 local time or 9:18 GMT.
California lies on the San Andreas Fault, which forms the tectonic boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate, two of the large moving plates that make up the Earth’s crust.
The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires that followed devastated the city.
In 1989, a major earthquake struck San Francisco, killing nine people and injuring hundreds.