People were “terrified.”
RIDGECREST, Calif. — At first, Amber Hamlin didn’t think much of the shaking that started to envelop her bedroom in this compact desert community.
After all, she had already endured a major 6.4-magnitude earthquake on the Fourth of July and a day’s worth of aftershocks.
But at 8:20 p.m. PST Friday, just as she had settled down to watch television with her three children, the shaking started. And kept going. And going.
“It started getting more intense, like a jerking motion,” the 48-year-old stay-at-home mom said. It was accompanied by a sound she described as “like a rumble.”
This was the 7.1 quake that had its epicenter near Ridgecrest and was felt from the San Francisco Bay area to the casino resorts of Las Vegas. But for all the shaking, the damage overall remained relatively light. The quake directed most of its energy in the sparsely populated areas of desert north of Los Angeles.
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