Twin Quakes Jolt L.A. : Minor Damage in 4.5 and 4.3 Shakes; No Injury Reports : Downtown High-Rises Wobble

In less than a half-hour, two brief but intense earthquakes wrenched a vast area of Los Angeles this morning, causing slight damage, setting downtown high-rises swaying, showering ceiling tiles down onto a Board of Supervisors hearing and forcing evacuations, but otherwise causing no apparent injuries.

The quake and aftershock, 25 minutes apart, were also only a fraction apart in strength.

Cal Tech seismologist Kate Hutton said the first shock, at 9:57 a.m., had a magnitude of 4.5 and lasted about five seconds. The second, at 10:22 a.m., registered at a magnitude of 4.3.

The epicenter was fixed near Montebello, along the same Elysian Park fault as the October, 1987, Whittier quake, which killed three people and measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. The Elysian Park fault extends from Montebello through East Los Angeles, skirting north of downtown to Elysian Park.

Hutton said it is “uncommon, but not rare” for similar-sized quakes to occur that close together, and added that it presages “a continuing series of small aftershocks.” Lucille Jones of the U.S. Geological Survey said a 1% to 2% chance remains that today’s quakes are foreshocks of a larger quake in the next day or two.

Nerves Jangled

The damage caused by today’s temblor was minimal and the toll to residents was confined to the nervous systems of thousands of office workers and schoolchildren who evacuated shaking buildings.

“It’s bad enough the Lakers lost. Now we have to have this,” groused Southern California Gas Co. official Ralph Cohen from his 11th-floor office in downtown Los Angeles.

In the schoolyard at Breed Elementary School in East Los Angeles, several students fainted after the sizable aftershock, including a little girl from quake-plagued Central America. She was carried away on a stretcher, murmuring in Spanish, “Not again, not again.”

An elderly man and woman were trapped for an hour in a stalled elevator in the eight-story Beverly Tower, a senior citizens’ residence in Montebello. Fire Capt. Orville Reed said the pair “are fine” and remained calm until help arrived.

Early surveys by government agencies and public utilities found the area’s systems--highways, bridges, dams, electricity, gas, water and telephone--were mostly undamaged, although dial tones were slow as thousands of unnerved residents grabbed for their phones when the shaking began.

A big-rig truck on the San Bernardino Freeway tipped over in the jolting, according to Los Angeles County fire officials. The driver was uninjured.

At the 73-story downtown Library Tower, the tallest building in the West and still under construction, workers hustled out and watched from a parking lot as the tower swayed “noticeably” for several seconds after the quake stopped, said a bystander.

In Montebello, near the epicenter, Gina Morales, 29, was at her desk at Cleveland Realty when the walls began creaking. “I ran over to my uncle (James Cleveland) and we grabbed each other and hung on.”