Earthquakes Hit Monterey County, Felt In Bay Area
PRUNEDALE (CBS 5 / BCN) -- The U.S. Geological Survey reported a series of earthquakes rattled a section of Monterey County and the surrounding region on Wednesday.
The latest quake was a magnitude 4.0 that hit at 8 p.m.
The epicenter was located 7 miles east-southeast of Prunedale and 42 miles south-southeast of San Jose, according to the USGS.
Authorities along California's central coast said they received no reports of serious damage or injury from any of Wednesday's quakes.
The very first quake struck at 12:51 a.m., a tremor with a magnitude of 4.5 near Fremont Peak State Park, according to the USGS. It had a depth of 5.2 miles.
Within an hour of the first tremor, 11 aftershocks rolled across roughly the same area. The aftershocks had a magnitude between 1.2 and 3.4, according to the USGS.
More than 2,300 people in 170 California zip codes reported that they felt at least one or more of the Monterey County quakes on Wednesday, according to information collected by the USGS, with the strongest shaking felt around Salinas and San Juan Bautista and weak shaking reported as far away as Fairfax and Merced.
This marked the second and third times since Saturday that the greater San Francisco Bay Area had experienced a temblor with a magnitude of 4.0 or larger. On Saturday, an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 4.1 struck east of San Jose and could be felt throughout much of the Bay Area.
(© 2011 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Bay City News contributed to this report.)
