ONLINE EXTRA: 4.2 earthquake shakes L.A. area

Sunday’s 4.2 earthquake shattered the glass of this apartment
building at 1395 Kelton Ave

By Shauna Mecartea and Marcelle
Richards
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

A 4.2 earthquake hit Los Angeles and West Hollywood Sept. 9 at
4:59 p.m. in what was the largest ground tremor since the 1994
Northridge disaster.

The epicenter, or central point, of the earthquake was 0.8 miles
from Beverly Hills. It rippled to surrounding areas, including
Westwood and Brentwood.

Nancy Greenstein, director of community service for university
police, said damage in Westwood was minimal: one man fell off a
ladder while preparing for an art show, a fire alarm was
activated.

Others reported that a few windows were shattered in
neighborhood businesses.

A Westwood apartment building on 1395 Kelton Avenue suffered the
most visible damages when a glass block wall shattered, exposing a
resident’s dwelling within.

Police received no reports of serious injuries. An emergency
construction service was sent to pick up the shards of glass and to
resurrect temporary boards until reconstruction occurs.

A brick wall near the corner of Kelton and Wilkins also suffered
damages from the earthquake. Two apartments in the building were
deemed "unsafe"and closed by the City of Los Angeles Department of
Building and Safety. Six other apartments were off limits in
particular areas to unauthorized personnel.

Apartment manager Jane Bledsoe, who was not on site at the time
of the earthquake, said the damage was minimal.

"We are going to fix it as quickly as possible,"she said.

According to the Southern California Earthquake Center, because
the earthquake was only 2.5 miles below the earth”šs surface,
the tremble was stronger and more widespread than earthquakes that
originate deeper in the ground.

Students on and off campus felt the tremors but had mixed
feelings about the earthquake.

"I was really excited by it,"said Allon Rafael, a fourth-year
physiological sciences student. "I find (earthquakes) totally
humbling and amazing."

Fourth-year political science student Nicholas Cooper, who lives
on Landfair Avenue, said he thought the shaking from the earthquake
was other tenants running and jumping into the communal pool.

For UCLA loading dock employee James McGrew who felt an
earthquake for the first time Sunday, the experience was
frightening.

"(My roommate) told me to go outside but I couldn’t
move,"he said. "I was more in shock."

The fault causing the earthquake remains unidentified, as with
most small earthquakes, since most of these are not plotted on
maps, said Kate Hutton, a seismologist at California Institute of
Technology.

Seismologists speculate the fault to be a part of the larger
Newport-Inglewood fault that runs from Beverly Hills to downtown
Los Angeles.

In this case, the motion of the quake ran horizontally ˆ
north and northwest to south and southeast.

Earthquakes of this magnitude can be expected about once a year
in the L.A. area, Hutton said.

"The whole West Coast is very prone to earthquakes,"she said.
"In Los Angeles, there are a lot of people living here so they are
more exposed to the risk."