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- LOS ANGELES (Reuters)
- A major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 on the open-ended Richter
scale rocked southern California early Saturday morning, knocking out power
to parts of Los Angeles, more than 100 miles from the epicenter.
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- A spokesman for the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department,
Bobby Brown, said 20 cars of a 40-car Amtrak train were derailed by the
quake. He said there were initial reports of injuries and that emergency
teams were racing to the scene.
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- The derailment took place near the town of Ludlow, a
few miles north of the epicenter, which was about 110 miles east of Los
Angeles.
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- A spokeswoman at the California Institute of Technology
said the quake, which struck at 2:46 a.m. PDT (5:46 a.m. EDT), was centered
32 miles north of the desert community of Joshua Tree.
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- The area north of Joshua Tree, in the Mojave Desert,
is sparsely populated.
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- The quake was felt as far away as Las Vegas, Nevada,
Tucson, Arizona, and San Diego, near the Mexican border. In Los Angeles
County, it caused power outages, rock slides and water main ruptures.
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- There were no immediate reports of major damage to buildings
in the Joshua Tree area, but a local radio station reported that objects
were knocked off shelves and there was local flooding from burst water
mains. One woman was injured when a wardrobe fell on her, police said.
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- In Los Angeles, between 5,000 and 10,000 people were
without power, according to the Department of Water and Power, which said
it hoped to have power restored by mid-day.
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- Witnesses described the quake, which lasted between 45
seconds and a minute, as a rolling motion rather than a sharp jolt.
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- The CalTech spokeswoman said the quake appeared to be
a fresh temblor and not an aftershock to the Landers quake which rocked
the area in 1992 with a 7.2 magnitude, killing at least one person.
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- The spokeswoman said Saturday's temblor had been named
the Hector quake because it took place near an old mining town of the same
name.
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- It was preceded by a series of smaller quakes on Friday
night, the largest of which registered 3.8 on the Richter scale.
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