A magnitude 5.2 earthquake occurred in northeastern San Diego County near Julian at 10:08 a.m. Monday, causing shaking that was felt as far northwest as Oxnard and as far northeast as Palm Springs, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The epicenter was 3 miles south of Julian and caused especially hard shaking there and in and around Ramona, San Diego Country Estates, Pine Valley, and Cuyamaca Ranch State Park, USGS said. Through 11 a.m. Monday, the quake had produced three aftershocks in the 3.0 to 3.5 range.
There were no immediate reports of significant damage.
The temblor started 8.3 miles deep, immediately south of the Elsinore fault zone, one of the busiest seismic zones in California, according to the USGS. The earthquake is likely to be followed by many smaller aftershocks. The 190-mile long strike-slip fault extends from near the Mexican border to the northern end of the Santa Ana mountains near Los Angeles, USGS says. The fault, which is capable of producing a quake as high as 7.5., faults through part of San Diego County.
Many people who subscribe to ShakeAlert, a USGS early warning system, received notices of the quake on their phones and watches Monday a second or two before it hit.
The shaking tossed around several items at The Barn Vintage Marketplace in Santa Ysabel. Owner Brandi Smothers was in the kitchen at her nearby home when her antique pottery “came flying off the shelves.”
She was also shocked into a very brief panic when the earthquake alarm on her phone started going off in the bluetooth in her ear. Smothers headed to her barn and found old antique mirrors “down off the shelves and broken.”
The second story was a little harder hit. “Anything that could fall is on the ground.”Still, she said, “I’m thinking we probably got away ok.”
At the nearby Julian Pie Shop,office manager Robin Young was talking to a customer when the earthquake hit.“It was pretty powerful. It was intense,” Young said. But, she said, “it didn’t last long enough to get a chance to react. Everyone froze.”A few things fell from shelves but it didn’t initially look like there was real damage.
Even hikers who had just begun their months-long journey on the Pacific Crest Trail felt it in the county’s backcountry.”Felt two separate shakes that each lasted about a second,” one person, who said he was on the trail near Warner Springs, wrote on Reddit. “Was pretty wild seeing the trail and all the vegetation around me shake violently like that.”
The San Diego Museum of Fine Art in Balboa Park briefly closed so that it could do a damage and safety check. It has since reopened. The quake also produced shaking that was strong enough to be noticed on the 14th floor of the federal courthouse in San Diego.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
