7.1 follows 6.4, moves residents of Ridgecrest

RIDGECREST, Calif. – In the beginning, Amber Hamlin was not very interested in the tremors that had begun to envelop her room in this small desert community.

After all, it had already suffered a major magnitude 6.4 earthquake on July 4th and a day of aftershocks.

But at 8:20 pm PST Friday, when she had set up to watch TV with her three children, the shake began. And carry on. And go.

"It started to become more intense, like a jerky movement," said the 48-year-old home mom. She was accompanied by a sound that she described as "a roaring sound."

That was the 7.1 earthquake that had its epicenter near Ridgecrest and was felt from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Las Vegas casinos complexes. Despite all the tremors, the damage remained relatively light. The earthquake directed most of its energy into sparsely populated desert areas north of Los Angeles.

At Ridgecrest, the jolts just did not stop because dawn was starting to arrive on Saturday. The working class community has long been left out, with many of its residents holding jobs in a naval weapons center near China Lake.

Not now. The media flooded the city to report the earthquake. Rescuers arrived from surrounding counties. An army of electricity company workers in bucket trucks bypassed Ridgecrest in search of fallen cables. Police patrolled the residential areas all night to protect themselves from looters.

& # 39; Deeply scared & # 39;

Authorities said the quake triggered at least three fires and dropped goods from supermarket shelves and Ridgecrest discount stores. Although it did not seem to have broken windows or collapsed walls, after a visit of the city, its most important impact seemed to concern the psyche of the residents.

"I did not think it would ever happen here," Hamlin said. who grew up in Ridgecrest. At that time, the earthquake arrived violently in his two-bedroom house.

The big screen TV fell off the wall when the earthquake reached its zenith. She heard the glass breaking around the house. The power of the house having failed, it was time to go out. She took medication, packed the children – a 15-year-old twin boy and girl, a 14-year-old girl and their Duchess St. Bernard, and then headed to a shelter.

"I was scared to death because I did not want my children to be hurt," she said.

If the earthquake had occurred earlier in the day, injuries reported in hospitals in the area may have been more than minor. Albertsons and Stater Bros. supermarkets were flooded with items that fell to the ground. For the second time this week, teams of workers have feverishly attempted to repair the damage caused by the earthquake in hopes of opening their doors on Saturday.

After the earthquake:What does the homeowners insurance cover?

At the Eastridge Market on Ridgecrest Boulevard, the earthquake turned the liquor store into an ocean of alcohol and broken glass. A crew tried to clean up the mess, but it was not an easy task. Owner Tony Abdullatif, in business with the neighborhood market for 12 years, estimated his losses at $ 100,000. Some of the broken bottles were selling for between $ 200 and $ 300.

"There is no insurance. What are we going to do? He said. The only good news is that no one was hurt when all the bottles started falling off the shelves. Abdullatif said that he was outside smoking. It looked like "a glass factory had exploded".

The Big Lots discount store was littered with all sorts of merchandise: men's underwear, box fans, headphones, sunscreen, large plastic bottles of Sprite soft drinks and toilet paper. Giant acoustic tiles and light characters hung from the ceiling.

A few doors away, a supermarket Stater Bros. seemed to have regained form in front of an army of workers gathered to try to clean up the mess. The situation was the same in an Albertsons supermarket, where teams were working indoors to try to clean up while an employee was doing his best to take a look at a mattress near the main door.

After suffering the July 4 earthquake in a Burger King, 26-year-old Joshua McGowen decided he had enough. McGowen and his wife Lacey Wells, 23, moved outside their apartment to make sure they would not end up in a collapsed building. But that did not work well either. When the giant earthquake hit Friday, he discovered they were under electric wires, forcing them to make a hasty retreat.

"I was just lying on a blanket in the grass," he said. Then, "I saw some sparks." Now, the couple says that they plan to return to Arizona.

Some residents have asked if two of the most violent earthquakes of the last twenty years striking in a day could mean an even bigger earthquake.

Jimmy Leyanna, 63, was in church with three or four other worshipers and the minister when the great earthquake struck. He wondered if the earthquake was a sign from above, especially since he said that he had made a joke on Thursday that he was afraid of not pleasing the whole world. powerful.

"I hope God does not mind me," Leyanna said.

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