- LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
- At least three people were killed when a strong earthquake measuring
6.5 struck the central California coast on Monday morning, collapsing buildings
in one town and swaying high-rise buildings from San Francisco to Los Angeles
hundreds of miles away.
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- Officials said that three people were killed in a building
collapse in the town of Paso Robles. Further details were not immediately
available, but the town, in a well-known wine growing area, was believed
to be the hardest hit in a quake that overall caused only "modest"
damage, officials said.
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- The quake, one of the largest to strike the seismically
active state in recent years, cut electric power to tens of thousands of
people but did not appear to cause the massive damage it might have, had
it hit a more heavily populated area like Los Angeles.
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- The U.S. Geological Survey said initial damage reports
were modest and could be measured in the millions of dollars. By contrast,
the Northridge earthquake of 1994 in the Los Angeles area, which measured
6.7, caused more than $40 billion in damage and ranks as one of the most
expensive natural disasters in U.S. history.
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- The epicenter of Monday's quake was located near San
Simeon, California, the home of Hearst Castle, the lavish mansion built
by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and one of the major tourist
attractions in the state, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
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- The castle, about 240 miles north of Los Angeles, was
evacuated but it suffered no apparent structural damage, officials said.
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- In Paso Robles the quake shook older buildings along
the town's main street, crumbling storefronts and sending hundreds of pounds
of bricks and rubble onto cars, witnesses said. A clock tower also collapsed.
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- The quake's depth along the San Simeon fault, part of
the state's San Andreas fault system, was measured at five miles. It struck
just before 11:16 a.m. PST (2:16 p.m. EST) and was followed by dozens of
aftershocks.
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- About 40,000 people lost electric power because of the
quake but the state's power grid operator said there were no reports of
damage to high-voltage lines and no damage to the Diablo Canyon nuclear
power generator where the temblor was felt in the plant's control room.
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- The USGS said the quake would produce hundreds of aftershocks
over the next days, weeks and even years but there was only a five to 10
percent risk that any of the aftershocks would be bigger than the initial
quake.
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- "You put an earthquake like that under Los Angeles
and you have tens of billions of dollars in damage. You put it out here
in a relatively remote place and fortunately there are not many immediate
consequences," Ross Stein, a USGS geophysicist, said.
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- Within one hour of the initial quake 30 aftershocks of
magnitude 3.0 or greater were recorded in the region, including one at
4.7, the USGS reported.
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- Ben Banuchi, editor of newspaper King City Rustler, in
King City, a central California agricultural city about 30 miles north
of San Simeon told a San Francisco television station, "It seemed
like being on a roller coaster ride over here. Just as you thought it was
over, it kept going on and on and on. At first we thought it was a truck
passing. It hit pretty hard over here."
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- In the Los Angeles area, many office workers in high-buildings
grabbed their desks as they felt the rolling motions of the quake.
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- In Santa Barbara, about 100 miles away, between Los Angeles
and the quake zone, buildings were evacuated but a sheriff's department
spokesman said no major damage had been reported.
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- California Highway Patrol officer Ron Friberg in Templeton,
located on Highway 101, east of the San Simeon area, said he had received
no preliminary reports of injuries or of structural damage to highway overpasses
or roads in the area.
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- But at least one motorist had called to report a rock
slide on a nearby highway, Friberg said. The severity of the slide was
not immediately known.
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- Friberg said there was "a lot of shaking" in
offices in Templeton. "We lost a lot of books and things off our shelves.
Some pictures on the walls were knocked down," he said about the highway
patrol's office.
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- "This is the most severe quake we've ever felt and
I've been here 25 years," said Carrie Bassford, who works at the San
Luis Obispo Fire Department. "This is a fairly new building and it's
supposed to be earthquake-proof and I could see the building just swaying
back and forth. I'm in the lobby. We just never felt anything like it here
ever. Our hearts are still beating pretty hard right now. This is the closest
we've ever come to a big one." (Additional reporting by Steve Gorman,
Kevin Krolicki, Peter Henderson, Ben Berkowitz and Gail Shiller in Los
Angeles; Duncan Martell in San Francisco)
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- © Reuters 2003. All Rights Reserved.
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