Quake damage is small, officials say

A magnitude 5.4 earthquake rattled Newport-Mesa shortly before noon Tuesday, bringing a flood of panicked phone calls to police and fire departments but little else.

The quake, according to the website for the U.S. Geological Survey, hit at 11:42 a.m. with the epicenter near Chino Hills, slightly northeast of Orange County. According to the site, the quake covered a large part of the Greater Los Angeles Area.

Moments after the quake, the Geological Survey rated it at 5.8, but downgraded it less than an hour later.

The Costa Mesa Police Department’s phones went down for about 15 minutes after the quake. Lt. Marty Carver said the new police headquarters under construction on Fair Drive sustained some minor damage, as an exterior wall cracked and several light fixtures broke inside.

Shopping centers went mostly unscathed too.

“A few stores reported glassware falling from the shelves, but it’s been very, very minor damage of any sort so far. I don’t think we even had shoppers leave the building,” said Debra Gunn Downing, spokeswoman for South Coast Plaza.

Meghan Duffy, a spokeswoman for Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, and Jenny Wedge, a spokeswoman for John Wayne Airport, said officials were inspecting both facilities but hadn’t come across any damage.

“They’ve inspected the runway and the perimeter of the airfield and haven’t found any issues,” Wedge said. “It looks like we may have had some intermittent issues with cellphone use and paging.”

UCI officials said outside of a few fallen books and framed pictures, the university remained unaffected.

Newport Beach police and firefighters immediately began patrolling the city looking for damage to key buildings and areas but found nothing of concern, officials said.

Nearly 50 aftershocks were reported in the hours following the quake, Geological Survey officials reported. The earthquake was in a thrust motion, meaning one plate of land is forced at an angle over another, and was seven to eight miles below the earth’s surface, said Kate Hutton, a scientist at the California Institute of Technology.

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at [email protected]. JOSEPH SERNA may be reached at (714) 966-4619 or at [email protected].