Strong earthquake rocks California's Napa Valley

Nina Quidit cleans up the Dollar Plus and Party Supplies Store in American Canyon Calif. after an earthquake on Sunday Aug. 24, 2014. Quidit and her husband were woken up in the early morning hours by the store's alarm company and immediately drove in to begin clean up. The 6.0-magnitude quake caused six significant fires, including at four mobile homes, Napa Division Fire Chief Darren Drake said. (AP Photo/Alex Washburn)
Nina Quidit cleans up the Dollar Plus and Party Supplies Store in American Canyon Calif. after an earthquake on Sunday Aug. 24, 2014. Quidit and her husband were woken up in the early morning hours by the store's alarm company and immediately drove in to begin clean up. The 6.0-magnitude quake caused six significant fires, including at four mobile homes, Napa Division Fire Chief Darren Drake said. (AP Photo/Alex Washburn)

NAPA, Calif. -- California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for a region north of San Francisco on Sunday, as emergency workers scrambled to put out fires and treat injuries after a strong earthquake, measured at magnitude 6.0, struck early Sunday.

Brown's emergency declaration for southern Napa County directed state agencies to respond with equipment and personnel. President Barack Obama was briefed on the earthquake, the White House said, and federal officials were in touch with state and local emergency responders.

Even as the shaking continued -- several smaller aftershocks were reported -- emergency crews were combing buildings in downtown Napa, making sure that no one had been trapped inside. Several fires were reported in the area, and a number of homes and buildings, including some downtown, had structural damage.

Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, where an outdoor triage tent was set up to handle the influx, reported treating 172 people in the emergency room, though hospital officials could not say how many of them were there for bruises and cuts suffered in the quake and how many for more routine injuries and illnesses.

Twelve people were admitted for broken bones, heart attacks and other problems directly related to the earthquake, including an adult who remained in critical condition Sunday night and a 13-year-old boy.

The teen was hit by flying debris from a collapsed fireplace and had to be airlifted to the children's hospital at the University of California Davis hospital for a neurological evaluation. His condition was listed as serious, hospital spokesman Phyllis Brown said.

Pacific Gas and Electric spokesman J.D. Guidi said about 30,000 lost power right after the quake hit, but that number was down to around 19,000 later in the day, most of them in Napa.

"Right now it's really about being able to get the fires out, making sure that anyone who could potentially be trapped in a building gets rescued and evacuated," said Mark Ghilarducci, the secretary of the California Emergency Management Agency.

The temblor struck about 6 miles south of Napa around 3:20 a.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the Bay Area since the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, which collapsed a section of the Bay Bridge.

Sunday's quake was felt widely throughout the region, with people reporting feeling it more than 200 miles south of Napa and as far east as the Nevada border. Amtrak suspended its train service through the Bay Area so tracks could be inspected.

California Highway Patrol officer Kevin Bartlett said cracks and damage to pavement closed the westbound Interstate 80 connector to westbound California 37 in Vallejo and westbound California 37 at the Sonoma off ramp. He said there hadn't been reports of injuries or people stranded in their cars, but there were numerous cases of flat tires from motorists driving over damaged roads.

The earthquake ruptured water mains and gas lines and damaged some of the region's famed wineries. At least six fires broke out, including one in a mobile home park that destroyed four homes and damaged two others.

Two residents of the mobile home park, Lynda and Bob Castell-Blanch, both 60, said they were jarred awake by a loud thump and roll.

"It was violent," Bob Castell-Blanch said. "Things were flying all over the place. There was a woman screaming from one of the houses, so loud it was total mayhem."

The couple said they had enough time to gather their cats and vintage guitars before evacuating. "That was all we had time for," he said, as they tried to buy water at the Ranch Market near the mobile home park.

Arik Housley, the store's owner, estimated at least $100,000 in damage at the two markets he owns in the area. He said that, like many people, he did not carry earthquake insurance because the premium was high.

Buildings across the city were damaged, including the county courthouse and several other historic brick buildings downtown. Although many had been retrofitted in recent years to withstand earthquakes, they did not hold, and large sections of brick and concrete collapsed onto the sidewalks.

"Certainly, a few of the retrofits didn't fare that well," said Mark Luce, a Napa County supervisor. He added that many more buildings, including the county administrative building, had interior damage -- broken sprinkler lines and fallen ceilings -- which would be costly to repair.

"The newer buildings that met current standards fared better, but there's still a lot of mess to clean up inside," he said.

Napa City Manager Mike Parness said at an afternoon news conference that 16 buildings were not safe to occupy, and there was only limited access to numerous other structures, mostly ones with broken windows. Officials said they were still assessing buildings in the area.

"It was a significant earthquake," Parness said in an interview. "Given the magnitude and the reports of damage, this is going to take some time to get back from."

A Red Cross evacuation center was set up at a church, and crews were assessing damage to homes, bridges and roadways. The Napa Unified School District canceled classes today.

"There's collapses, fires," said Napa Fire Capt. Doug Bridewell, standing in front of large pieces of masonry that broke loose from an early 20th-century office building where a fire had just been extinguished. "That's the worst shaking I've ever been in."

Although most of the downtown buildings that had the worst damage were empty when the temblor hit early in the morning, emergency crews searched for any janitorial or security workers who may have been on site and roped off the buildings to keep the public away from falling concrete.

"We'll look at what happened with these couple buildings where we saw these failures, and see if there's anything we missed," Luce said. "We've had a live test of what a 6.0 earthquake will do."

While Sunday's earthquake was the largest to hit the region since 1989, seismologists said it paled in comparison to Loma Prieta, which was 6.9 in magnitude, or the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which was 7.8.

"The 1906 earthquake was about 500 times larger," said Ross Stein, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey. Loma Prieta had 30 times the energy.

Information for this article was contributed by Quentin Hardy, Ian Lovett, Rick Rojas and Jim Kerstetter of The New York Times; by Ellen Knickmeyer, Tom Verdin, Lisa Leff and Courtney Bonnell of The Associated Press; and by Michael B. Marois, Alison Vekshin, Dan Hart, Nancy Moran and Mary Childs of Bloomberg News.

A Section on 08/25/2014

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