Bay Area Rocked by 5.2 Earthquake

A 5.2 magnitude earthquake rattled the Bay Area at 10 p.m. Monday, one of the strongest quakes in the region since the devastating 1989 Loma Prieta quake.

There were no early reports of serious damage or injuries, although the 10-second temblor knocked out phone service to areas of San Jose and sent bottles plummeting off shelves in restaurants in the town of Gilroy, three miles from the quake’s epicenter.

The earthquake also violently rattled the upper decks of the Compaq Center in San Jose in the third period of a National Hockey League playoff game against the Colorado Avalanche, but did not stop the game.

“It was a doozy,” said Lesley Benson, owner of the Claddagh, an Irish restaurant in Gilroy. “It started off to be a little roller, and then there was a big shudder.”

Benson said that she ran for the door frame when the rolling started, and “that’s when the shudder came. It slammed me into the doorjamb.”

Her customers, many of whom had gathered to watch the hockey game on TV, stopped cheering as tables shook and bottles skittered. A basket of strawberries flew down from the shelves. Several aftershocks followed.

Pat Jorgenson, spokeswoman for the U.S. Geological Survey in the Bay Area, said the quake was centered on the San Andreas fault and was only 7.5 miles deep. The quake was strongly felt for about 200 miles, from San Jose north to Vallejo.

It was among the strongest quakes here since Oct. 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta quake killed 67 people and damaged 13,000 homes, rupturing the Bay Bridge and turning downtown Santa Cruz, near the temblor’s epicenter, to rubble.

For Bay Area residents at the hockey game Monday, the trembling stadium in San Jose was eerily reminiscent of that earlier quake, which was witnessed by thousands of TV viewers who tuned in for the third game of the World Series and saw the upper bleachers of Candlestick Park sway as though moved by a stiff wind.

Quakes in the Gilroy area are common, Jorgenson said. The area is located near what is known as the creeping segment of the San Andreas, a seismically active region. She said there was no way to know whether Monday’s quake was a precursor to a larger temblor.

Gilroy Mayor Tom Springer said his town fared well in the quake. “We just had a little 5.2 earthquake here, that’s all. No damage. No medical calls. We Californians are used to this sort of thing.”

Springer, who was fielding calls at the town’s police station, said the quake caused glass breakage in several local stores and caused the water sprinkler system to engage at the local Wal-Mart, closing the store.

“We were in a local restaurant doing a study session for the City Council, and it felt like a truck hit the building,” Springer said. “But after the first shock, we got a hold of ourselves.”

The quake caused light fixtures to rattle throughout San Francisco.

“We got a lot of calls from guests--I guess for some of them this was their first earthquake,” said a woman who identified herself as Addie, a night clerk at the Holiday Inn in Fisherman’s Wharf. “Some of the stuff that was supposed to be on the tables started flying around. Pictures were shaking on the walls.

“But it was over pretty quickly. I’ll bet most of our guests are fast asleep by now.”

But in Gilroy, “It was scary,” said Rose Martinez, night clerk at the Motel 6. “Guests started calling immediately and I told them, ‘This is California. Everything is going to be OK.’”