Earthquake: Friday’s 3.4 magnitude trembler hits 11 miles north of SP
June 22, 2011
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
An earthquake measuring 3.4 on the Richter scale was reported Friday at 5:58 p.m., a trembler that struck 11 miles north of Santa Paula and 11 miles east-northeast of Ojai.
The quake was centered in the Los Padres National Forest - 12 miles northwest of Fillmore - leading to the age old question: if an earthquake rattles the forest, can anybody feel it?
No one knows, but Patty Harrison of Santa Paula did. “I was upstairs in my office typing on my computer when I heard a loud SWOOSH and felt the jolt,” said Harrison. “It was quite unsettling because it jolted our house, just once. I think it felt stronger than in some areas because we live near the Santa Paula Creek.”
Harrison “called my hubby, Ralph, in Saticoy. He didn’t feel it, but my daughter-in-law says that her brother, Alec, felt the jolt up at Thomas Aquinas College.”
No damage was reported from the June 17 quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey reported broke close to the ground surface. Although seismologists were uncertain of the exact depth, it was estimated at about 0.6 of a mile below ground.
The location was mapped as 34.511°N, 119.076°W below the Santa Inez Fault and above the San Cayetano that ranges through the river valley north of Santa Paula. The fault map does not show the quake was on a known active fault line.
It was the second Ventura County earthquake that occurred Friday. The first, measured at 2.0-magnitude, was reported to have hit at about 1:50 p.m. three miles southeast of Port Hueneme, four miles east-southeast of Channel Islands Beach and four miles south-southeast of Oxnard. The depth was estimated at 11.7 miles and the exact location - north of the Bailey Fault - was mapped at 34.130°N, 119.167°W.
