Moderate earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1 shakes Southern California

LOS ANGELES — A magnitude 4.2 earthquake was felt widely across the nation’s second largest city Friday and shook things off shelves near the epicenter in a small mountain community east of Los Angeles, but there were no reports of major damage or injuries.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the 10:55 a.m. quake was centered about a mile (1 kilometer) northwest of Lytle Creek, in the San Gabriel Mountains about 45 miles (70 kilometers) east of downtown Los Angeles. The depth was put at 5.5 miles (8.8 kilometers).

It came less than a week after a similar quake with a magnitude of 4.1 also hit the Los Angeles area and was felt by people watching the Rose Parade in Pasadena on New Year’s Day.

Michael Guardado, who works at the front desk of the San Bernardino National Forest’s Lytle Creek Ranger Station, said after Friday’s quake the “building shook hard” and he had heard that “a lot of rocks” had fallen onto Lytle Creek Road.

Cari Torguson, a bartender at Melody’s Place in Lytle Creek, said she felt “a hard boom and a shake.”

“It wasn’t very long, but it was scary,” she told The Associated Press.

A decorative glass mushroom above the bar fell and broke, and a jar of instant coffee toppled off a shelf in the adjoining store, she said. Only a handful of people were inside the building.

The quake was centered within miles of the home of minor league baseball’s Rancho Cucamonga Quakes. “What’s in a name, you say,” the team quipped on social media.

The tremor was felt as a slight rocking in downtown Los Angeles. Shaking was also reported in several surrounding counties and cities including Long Beach, more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) southwest of Lytle Creek.

The quake occurred in Cajon Pass, where the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults come together, veteran seismologist Lucy Jones said in a social media post. In 1970 there was a magnitude 5.2 quake with a 4.0 foreshock close to the same location, she said.