still experiencing after shocks, they re constant. we had a little one this morning that didn t wake me up. i guess it was a precursor about point something could you guys feel that one? that s someone who definitely felt it and assessing the damage in her own home. we ve been wondering about damage assessments throughout this part of california. what have you learned? so we talked to as i said earlier a hotelier that said they felt damage there. you heard a woman talking about fires. another person who lives in ridge crest says she definitely sees fires. she is concerned about that. as you know when these happen sometimes they can, for example, break gas lines and that sort of thing which can create fires. we saw that happen in the san francisco earthquake there where a whole area was basically burned down in the marina
happening. i can tell you here in the los angeles area, and we re about 156 miles away from ridge crest. so giving you some idea it s being felt all over the place. santa barbara, pasadena, all of these places have felt it. but we should also mention las vegas felt it, and las vegas may have felt it even stronger. why? because of where this particular earthquake was centered. ridge crest is actually closer to las vegas than it is to, for example, los angeles. so wherever this is epicentered that is where you re going to feel the strongest and have the most potential for damage and injuries. i do want to mention this to folks who are in the southern western part of the country. do not call 911 unless you have been injured or there are injuries you can see. because what happens is those phone lines get filled with people saying we felt this earthquake, we want to know what s going on, that is not the venue for that. the los angeles police department are asking people
because of that. which is why they tell people turn off your gas if you can, turn off your water, prepare youvls in these sorts of things and so you have no warning. that s why if it happens right after if everything s okay and you re in a safe spot and you can do these things, you should definitely do some of the things you re taught here in california. lucy jones who s a renowned seismologist has said, yes, there was a slight warning, a 4.2 magnitude quake happened there in ridge crest about a half an hour before a larger quake happened. but you don t know that because we get little earthquakes all the time. people are relatively used to having a small shake and then they go, oh, wow, we just experienced an earthquake. when there s no damage, no issues it doesn t feel big, you go about your day, you go about your business. one of the things that could be here is it is a holiday. there isn t a lot of traffic, not a lot of folks out on the roads whether you re in los
we are seismologist measuring the movement of the ground. damage reports go to the office of government services. rob, can i ask you to come join us? so rob graves is a seismologist with the us geological survey and regional coordinator for southern california. and let me just obviously we re here because we had an earthquake to celebrate fourth of july. we re going to have people out, our geologists are heading out into the field right now to see if they can document any fault displacement obviously if any damage reports will come in. this earthquake was large enough where the shaking could have caused damage. one thing i d like to note is that here in the l.a. basin area because as lucy was explaining the waves, the low frequency waves tend to travel further than the high frequency. many people out in the l.a. basin would have felt that rolling shaking whereas up here in the mountains people didn t feel it as strongly.
so we re going to have even in the l.a. area we ll have disparity in terms of the shaking. i know it s early but any take-aways from this quake? wrap it up for us. there is a definition of a change in the news cycle. usually at this point you re still asking us what was the magnitude. luckily now we can give an accurate magnitude very quickly. it s not yet an hour since the earthquake. one comment i would make if you ve noticed we ve had a lot of after shocks. those in general are not being felt in the l.a. basten. i haven t had a chance to keep track but we ve had dozens, i think about three at this point. we will continue to have a lot of after shocks. this area is also