LOS ANGELES — Southern Californians were jolted from their sleep before dawn Tuesday as a small but strongly felt earthquake struck beneath Los Angeles’ eastern suburbs.
No damage or injuries were reported, however, and jangled nerves appeared to be the biggest impact of the magnitude-4.4 temblor, which struck at 4:04 a.m.
“It was a rude awakening,” said Amber Szabo, manager of the skin-care store Lather in Pasadena.
The quake was centered 10 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, 12 miles under the city of Pico Rivera.
In 1987, a fault in that area produced the magnitude-5.9 Whittier Narrows quake, which killed eight people and caused more than $350 million in damage. But Tuesday’s quake was probably not an aftershock because too much time has elapsed, said seismologist Kate Hutton at the California Institute of Technology.
The quake was felt south to San Diego County, north and east to the deserts and west along the coast through Malibu and into Ventura County, according to the U.S. Geological Survey’s “community Internet intensity” mapping system of more than 13,000 citizen reports.
California has not had a major damaging earthquake since 1994, when the magnitude-6.7 Northridge quake struck greater Los Angeles, killing dozens and injuring thousands.
