Small Quakes Rattle O.C.--and Some Nerves

A series of small earthquakes peppered Orange County on Tuesday, doing no apparent damage but fraying some nerves.

The main quake, of magnitude 3.9, struck at 1:58 p.m. about 7 miles southeast of Yorba Linda, said spokeswoman Sue McHugh of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. It was felt over a wide area of Orange and southeastern Los Angeles counties.

There also were two foreshocks and an aftershock, McHugh said, all centered in roughly the same location south of the Whittier Fault Zone. First was a 1.3-magnitude quake at 6:46 p.m. Monday, followed by another with a magnitude of 1.2 at 1:02 a.m. Tuesday. The 2.1-magnitude aftershock was recorded at 2:24 p.m. Tuesday.

The Brea Police Department, which patrols Yorba Linda, received about 10 calls from nervous residents after the main shock but received no reports of damage or injuries.

Charlie Flores, a police records technician with the Yorba Linda substation of the Brea Police Department, described the quake as “a quick jarring shock.”

“It was the kind of jolt that felt like there should have been something bigger coming, but there wasn’t,” she said. “There’s always the flash in the back of your mind that this could be the big one, but [the quake] was not even enough for anything to fall off the shelves.”

Few others said they felt the tremble. “What earthquake?” said David Kenner, a grocery clerk at a Ralphs grocery store in Brea.