4.0 Aftershock Rattles Nerves in Sierra Madre : Earthquake: No evidence of damage is found in San Gabriel Valley communities that suffered $33.5 million damage from June 28 temblor.

A moderate earthquake--the latest and one of the largest among the scores of aftershocks following the destructive Sierra Madre earthquake on June 28--rattled foothill communities along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains on Saturday afternoon, but there were no reports of significant damage.

“There was a good, hard jolt. A very hard jolt,” said Cheri Brown, a desk officer with the Police Department in Monrovia, one of the towns hardest hit in the earlier earthquake. “We got a couple of calls, but no one reported anything down.” Scientists at the Caltech Seismology Laboratory in Pasadena said the temblor registered a magnitude of 4.0. It occurred at 3:55 p.m. and was centered about six miles north of Sierra Madre, near the epicenter of the earlier 5.8 quake.

Police officials in Sierra Madre, Altadena, Pasadena, Monrovia and Arcadia--the towns that suffered a combined total of $33.5 million damage in the June 28 quake--said patrol units found no evidence of further damage Saturday, but several people called in to make sure what they’d felt was an earthquake.

“It started off like a little rolling. Then it kind of jolted. It didn’t last very long. I’d say about five seconds,” said Jake Ganley, a host at the Chicago Ribs restaurant in Old Pasadena, which lost part of its brick facade in the June 28 temblor.

“Two women were sitting by the front window and they quickly got up so they wouldn’t get hit in case it was the big one,” Ganley said. “Then they said, ‘Can we have the check, please?’ ”

Moments later, after peering out a window, Ganley reported that “everyone’s walking the streets, just like normal.”

The Sierra Madre quake, emanating from a long dormant fault line, killed a woman in Arcadia and damaged 2,300 homes and businesses.

Caltech seismologists said two aftershocks were recorded a few hours after the June 28 quake that were more powerful than the Saturday aftershock--one with a magnitude of 4.3 and the other with a magnitude of 4.1.

The aftershock Saturday came a day after an apparently unrelated 4.0 earthquake shook the Santa Clarita Valley about 55 miles northwest of Sierra Madre, buckling some pavement on the Golden State Freeway near Castaic. The pavement was repaired by noon Saturday.