COUNTYWIDE : Only Caltech Notes 2 Small Earthquakes

Two small earthquakes shuddered through Orange County early Monday but were so minor that no one appeared to notice, authorities said.

Officials at Caltech in Pasadena said they could not give the temblors’ precise location or name the fault involved because earth movement was minimal.

“We generally don’t even try for quakes that small,” Caltech seismologist Kate Hutton said. “It’s on a fault so small it’s not even on the map.”

Still, the institute’s sensors detected a quake of 2.2 magnitude in Anaheim at 2:29 a.m. That was followed at 3:15 a.m. by a related temblor there of 2.4 magnitude, Caltech officials said.

Asked about Monday’s pre-dawn quakes, Sheriff’s Lt. Richard J. Olson exclaimed: “What earthquake? This morning? Nobody here knows anything about it.”

A police spokesman in Anaheim said no one had called to report any damage. And the security division at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana also had no reports of anything out of the ordinary early Monday, hospital spokeswoman Joyce Lowder said.

The two temblors were the latest of a dozen small quakes to hit Orange County this year, Hutton said.

But then, Southern California is “like a shotgun--with quakes all over the place,” Hutton said. “The big ones are on a major fault, but the small ones could be anywhere.”

With sensors tracking earth movements from the Mexican border north to Isabella Lake, Caltech records about 100 quakes per week, most of less than magnitude 2.5 and “maybe five to 10 of those that are (magnitude) 2.5 and larger,” Hutton said.

“They’re all over the place,” she added, “most often in the hills.”