Huge 6.4-magnitude quake rocks Northern California

A huge 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of northern California early Tuesday, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.

The “notable” quake struck around seven miles west-southwest of Ferndale, a town of about 15,000 people 261 miles north of San Francisco, the USGS said at 5:45 a.m., which was 2:45 a.m. local time.

It set off the agency’s early-earning “shake alert,” but was initially not expected to create a damaging tsunami in the area, the National Weather Service said.

There were no initial reports of widespread damage, but locals tweeted images of the aftermath, with more than 65,000 people losing power in the area, also affecting Eureka and Fortuna.

The Humbolt County Sheriff’s office also said that power was out across the county.

“That was a big one,” Caroline Titus, a former editor of a Ferndale newspaper, tweeted along with video of toppled items strewn around the floor of her home. “Home is a mess,” she said.

It came exactly a year to the day the same area was rocked by a 6.2-magnitude quake, with Titus among those who had shared images of the damage then, too.

Sites monitoring scanner traffic said that authorities were called out to gas leaks in the area, with no initial indication of how widespread the issue was.

The earthquake came just days after a small magnitude 3.6 earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area, waking up thousands of people at 3:39 a.m. Saturday and causing minor damage. That one was centered in El Cerrito, about a 16-mile drive to downtown San Francisco.