Powerful earthquake strikes off the coast of Northern California

Our live coverage of today’s quake in Northern California has concluded. Please scroll through the post below to learn about today’s developments.

Coastal communities in California and Oregon avoided potential disaster when a powerful earthquake in the Pacific Ocean did not ultimately generate a tsunami Thursday.

The 7.0-magnitude quake that struck off the coast of Northern California was relatively rare on a global scale: Only about 15 of that strength are measured around the world each year, experts say.

The quake is even more rare by California standards. Here’s where it stands among the state’s strongest temblors:

A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 shook the coast of Northern California on Thursday, triggering a tsunami warning for millions of people.

The tsunami warnings have since been canceled, and officials from the US Geological Survey said they have not had reports of landslides or other significant damage.

Here’s what we know:

This post has been updated to reflect the latest power outage total in Humboldt County.

President Joe Biden walks to the Rose Garden to deliver remarks at the White House in Washington, DC, on November 26.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the 7.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of northern California, White House spokesperson Jeremy Edwards said Thursday.

“At his direction, Senior Administration and FEMA Regional officials are in touch with their state and local counterparts in California and Oregon,” Edwards said in a statement. “We stand ready to provide further support as needed — at this time there are no requests for federal assistance.”

The White House told residents to “remain vigilant and listen to local officials.”

Footage captured by California resident Wren Raftery shows her backyard pool shaking Thursday in Chico, a city about 90 miles north of Sacramento.

Raftery told CNN she was in her living room when she got the earthquake alert on her phone at around 10:45 a.m. PST. She was with her 13-year-old daughter, who was at home sick.

About 10 seconds after she received the alert, Raftery said she experienced some slight shaking. She and her daughter then stepped outside to her backyard pool where she “felt the earthquake stronger.”

But Raftery said she then felt a second shaking, which she described as “mild,” about 5 minutes after the first one. This prompted her and her daughter to run back into the house. The second shaking barely lasted 10 seconds, though it left her feeling dizzy for an hour, Raftery told CNN.

“I was feeling dizzy for an hour. I felt my equilibrium was off,” Raftery said at the end of the second quake, which stopped roughly before 11:00 a.m. PST.

Raftery said she later received a message from her 10-year-old’s fifth-grade teacher informing parents that “all the students did a good job getting under their desks to be safe and were able to feel the quake.” Raftery, who was born in Chico and has lived there nearly her entire life, said that she has not heard reports of any damage in the town after speaking with her family.

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Backyard pool shakes during California earthquake

00:39 - Source: CNN

Backyard pool shakes during California earthquake

00:39

As an earthquake rattled Ferndale, California, resident Caroline Titus rushed out of her home to find her car was “jumping about” and a power transformer had blown, leaving her neighborhood without power, CNN affiliate KGO reports.

She immediately ran down the block to her granddaughter’s pre-school building. When she arrived, the children were huddled under an outdoor play structure and a teacher was calming them by singing the ABCs, Titus told the affiliate.

The town has “miraculously” not sustained severe damage, Titus said. Building windows remained intact and “it’s just stuff off the shelves,” she said.

After the transformer blew down the street, the neighborhood was without power for about 30 minutes, she said. At one point, more than 10,000 homes and businesses in Humboldt County, where Ferndale is located, were without power, according to PowerOutage.us.

“We really dodged a bullet on this one,” she told CNN, adding that the residents “consider ourselves lucky.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during a press conference in Otay Mesa, California, on December 5.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in response to Thursday’s earthquake in Northern California. The move allows resources to move more freely to aid with any damage that occurred.

Early damage assessments are still underway, and the state is working with teams on the ground, he said.

“It’s another reminder of the state that we live in and the state of mind we need to bring to our day to day reality,” Newsom said.

The US Geological Survey said the earthquake that struck off the coast of Northern California was typical of the area, and it has not received any detailed reports of damage or landslides related to the event as of right now.

In a briefing on Thursday, Stephen DeLong, a supervisory research geologist at the USGS, said the earthquake occurred “well off shore.” The epicenter of the quake was about 50 miles southwest of Eureka, California, over the Pacific Ocean, the USGS previously said.

DeLong said the tectonic plate to the north moved to the right and the plate to the south moved to the left.

Still, estimates and data shows that there were intensity 8 levels of shaking, which is considered “severe shaking,” according to Robert de Groot, the ShakeAlert national coordinator for communication, education and outreach at USGS.

People could have seen things falling off of shelves, furniture being moved or windows breaking, he said.

As tsunami warnings were issued for the San Francisco area following the earthquake, Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART, announced it was experiencing significant service disruptions that included cancellation of service along its underwater rail line, the Transbay Tube.

Service was resumed after the tsunami warning was canceled, but riders should still plan for an approximately 20-minute delay as the transportation system recovers, BART said.

BART provides transit that connects the San Francisco Peninsula to the East and South Bay. On an average weekday, about 150,000 riders use the service, though it is unclear how many people are impacted by the current delays.

The headline and post have been updated with the latest information from BART.

One resident in Eureka, California, experienced vibrations from the earthquake for about 30 seconds, he told CNN, describing the event as “long and rolling.”

At the end of the quake, the vibrations were so small that John Wrigley said he felt almost seasick, as if he was on a ship.

The earthquake was not sharp in nature, Wrigley said, and he didn’t experience any damage to his home.

After speaking with neighbors and other friends in the community, Wrigley — who has lived in Humboldt County nearly his entire life — had not heard reports of any damage elsewhere in the coastal town. The Eureka city manager has also told CNN there were no immediate reports of damage.

Wrigley, who has experienced roughly 10 earthquakes while living in the county, said Thursday’s was the longest one he’s experienced there.

Coastal residents in Northern California and Oregon felt extreme whiplash Thursday when, within a single hour, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Eureka, a tsunami warning was posted, officials urged people to pack go-bags and head a mile inland, and then the tsunami warning was canceled.

The immediate warning was evidence of how disastrous a tsunami would be, particularly along the highly populated West Coast, and how important it was to get that message out as soon as possible — even before anyone knew whether a tsunami was on the way.

Underwater earthquakes of this magnitude have a very high likelihood of strong vertical movement: the ocean floor jerks upward or downward and jolts the water around it, generating a tsunami.

But it’s hard to tell whether that’s happened in the minutes after the earthquake strikes — and those minutes are precious time people need to be warned to evacuate.

This is why you’ll see most off-coast earthquakes come with a tsunami warning, just in case.

Geophysicists would much rather get the warning out and cancel it than give people too little time to get to safety.

Until scientists know for certain that there is no danger, the message to everyone along the coast has to be, “Get to higher ground.”

While aftershocks are happening near the epicenter of Thursday’s earthquake, it is unlikely there will be additional earthquakes of a 7 magnitude, seismologist Jeffrey Park told CNN.

It is possible that, since the earthquake redistributed the stress in the surrounding fault lines, there may be some smaller earthquakes on the faults, he said.

“Some of the earthquake faults could get better in the region very close to where the rupture occurred. But also in some of the other faults that are maybe even on shore could have earthquake activities. Smaller earthquakes, but because they might occur on land would be more damaging to the buildings above them,” Park said.

People watch the waves come in after an earthquake was felt widely across Northern California at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, Thursday, December 5.

There are so far no reports of injuries or damage in San Francisco after today’s powerful Northern California earthquake, according to Capt. Justin Schorr of the city’s fire department.

The quake, with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, struck nearly 300 miles up the coast near the town of Eureka, according to the US Geological Survey.

Tsunami warnings were immediately issued along the Northern California and Oregon coastlines but were dropped about an hour later. As the warnings were in effect, San Francisco fire personnel urged coastal residents to seek higher ground, Schorr said.

“This was not a false alarm,” Schorr said, addressing the tsunami warnings. He noted the fire department ensured residents were well aware of the possible safety risks and adhered to alerts from the US Geological Survey and National Tsunami Warning Center.

This post was updated with more information from the San Francisco Fire Department.

The city manager of Eureka, California, said there has not been significant damage reported there so far, after an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.0 struck off the coast near the northern city.

Miles Slattery told CNN there have not been any calls for broken gas lines or significant structural damage so far. He described the quake on Thursday as “long,” but not as “violent” as previous events, namely those with an epicenter on land.

The earthquake hit off the coast, about 60 miles southwest of Ferndale, California, the US Geological Survey said. Eureka is located about 19 miles north of Ferndale, and some 300 miles north of San Francisco.

Parts of the California and Oregon coast, including Eureka, were under a tsunami warning in the minutes following the powerful quake. The warning has since been canceled, but Slattery said part of the town was evacuated.

Some background: In December 2022, a 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Northern California’s Eureka area, the US Geological Survey said, leaving at least two people dead, drawing reports of damage to roads and homes, shaking residents from their sleep and leaving tens of thousands without electricity.

Less than two weeks later, a 5.4 magnitude earthquake occurred about 30 miles south of Eureka and was centered about 9 miles southeast of Rio Dell, the USGS said.

The tsunami warning for California and Oregon’s coastal areas has been canceled, according to the National Tsunami Warning Center.

A small change in ocean height of several inches was recorded by an ocean buoy around 200 miles off the coast of California, but no significant change was recorded on shore, prompting the cancellation of the warning.

There have been at least six aftershocks in the last 10 minutes, including a 4.2-magnitude quake near Petrolia, California.

At least a dozen aftershocks have taken place since the original 7.0-magnitude quake occurred at 10:44 a.m. PT.

There are over 10,000 customers without power in Humboldt County, California, the closest county to the epicenter of Thursday’s earthquake, according to PowerOutage.us.

That’s about 10% of the customers tracked in the county by the outlet.

There are no notable outages in the surrounding counties.

Officials are still evaluating whether large counties in central and Southern California face any risk of tsunami impacts after a powerful earthquake struck in the far northern part of the state, according to the National Weather Service.

That message came as an update to an earlier message from the office, which had said there was no tsunami threat to those areas.

The quake — which had a preliminary magnitude of 7.0, according to the US Geological Survey — struck near Eureka, California, which is nearly 300 miles north of San Francisco.

There are only about 15 earthquakes that reach the 7.0 magnitude range per year, according to CNN’s Chad Myers and the United States Geological Survey.

“But they typically don’t happen so close to land; this one was not very far offshore,” Myers said.

He added that a 7.0-magnitude earthquake is considered a strong, borderline major quake.

Maureen Long speaks during an interview on Thursday.

One seismologist is warning people along parts of the coast of California and Oregon that the tsunami warnings in effect are “something to take very seriously.”

Maureen Long, who is also a professor of earth and planetary sciences at Yale University, said the most important thing is to “be aware.”

The National Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning after a powerful 7.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Northern California on Thursday. Nearly 5 million people are under that warning from Davenport, California, up to Douglas/Lane Line, Oregon, the agency said. This includes the San Francisco Bay area, Eureka, Fort Bragg, and Crescent City, California.

Tsunami activity is likely reaching the coastline now, according to forecasts. Long said the reason for that delay — between the earthquake and potential tsunami impacts — is because earthquake waves travel faster.

A tsunami wave “in the open ocean tends to travel about as fast as a jet plane flies, whereas earthquake waves travel much faster,” she said. That delay means it is easier for experts to issue tsunami warnings, Long said.