Quake Injuries, Damage Are Minor

Ventura County residents felt a moderate magnitude-4.9 aftershock ripple beneath them early Monday but reported no serious injuries or damage from the strongest quake in 15 months.

The aftershock from last year’s Northridge earthquake rolled across the region about 1:40 a.m. from an epicenter in the Santa Susana Mountains, eight miles south-southwest of Castaic, said Sue Pitts, a spokeswoman for the seismology lab at Caltech.

The shaker followed a magnitude-3.1 quake at 12:19 a.m. from the same epicenter and was itself followed by a magnitude-3.2 aftershock at 1:58 a.m. with an epicenter about six miles south-southwest of Castaic, Pitts said.

Officials at Simi Valley Hospital said two people came to the emergency room after the aftershock--one complaining of a bumped head and the other a wrenched back--but both were treated and released.

Police in Simi Valley and Fillmore said they got calls from anxious residents wanting to know about the strength of the aftershock, but no one reported any damage or injuries.

“I live out in Piru, and it shook real hard,” Ventura County Sheriff’s Lt. Leslie Warren said. “It moved some things around on our shelves so when we opened the cupboards, things fell out that had moved. . . . We were debating whether to run outside or not.”

The aftershock also rattled nerves in Fillmore and Simi Valley, where residents remembered the magnitude-6.7 earthquake in 1994.

“It shook me up out of bed,” said Esther Woldman, 86, of Simi Valley.

“In fact, I went out to my patio here to see what was going on outside, but evidently people are sort of getting used to it and it just passed by,” Woldman said. “I couldn’t fall asleep until about quarter to 4 this morning. I was waiting for another one, it shook me up so bad. I was all alone, and that’s horrible.”