UCLA students and Napa residents experienced the strongest earthquake in the Bay Area since 1989 on Sunday, with a 6.0-magnitude quake shaking the town of about 78,000 and beyond.
“At first, it felt like a small rumble,” said Olivia Hansell, a fourth-year human biology and society student who was home for the weekend in Napa. “Then the earthquake really started whipping my house … and I watched the walls basically sway like Jell-O.”
UCLA students are no strangers to earthquakes, especially with two occurring near the campus in 2014, the most recent in June. The Napa Valley earthquake on Sunday, however, was nearly 40 times bigger than the 4.4-magnitude quake by UCLA in March.
The tremors began at 3:20 a.m. about 5 miles south of Napa, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. More than 250 people were injured and dozens of buildings were red-tagged as uninhabitable as of Monday afternoon in Napa and Vallejo, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. With the U.S. Geological Survey estimating that the quake caused at least $1 billion in damages, Gov. Jerry Brown issued a state of emergency Sunday.
“For a lot of my friends’ houses, it was like someone picked up their houses, shook them and placed them back,” said Jenna Joske, a fourth-year psychology student and Napa resident.
Though Joske’s house suffered no structural damage, she said many of her family’s dishes, picture frames and wine bottles broke and were scattered on the floor.
Tatum Souza, a fifth-year sociology student, said she immediately moved beneath the door frame of her parents‘ house when she felt the jolts and then checked on her parents to see if they were safe.
“A bottle of olive oil fell in my home but nothing broke,” Souza said. “I drove (to) downtown Napa to go to the gym (on Sunday) and thought no one else (had seen) a lot of damage.”
When Souza arrived downtown, she said she saw many closed stores. Bricks that had fallen from some buildings were littered throughout the street and water was running from a broken water main, she said.
Some UCLA students said they felt the earthquake as far as San Francisco, about 50 miles south of Napa.
“It was pretty subtle at first, but it got bigger and the entire house was shaking,” said Amy Lin, a fifth-year political science student who was at her family’s house in San Francisco on Sunday.
Residents of Napa and the surrounding regions jumped into the recovery process after the earthquake. Joske, who works at a local hospital’s emergency room, worked on Sunday even though it was not her shift. About 15 to 20 workers she knew did the same, she said.
“(Staff) were all running on the adrenaline,” Joske said. “One of the supervisors worked for 20 hours on Sunday, slept for four hours, then went back to work.”
Hansell said the Napa community rallied immediately and helped to pick up broken glass and shattered plates from neighbors’ houses.
“(Napa) is a small town where we all know each other,” she said. “While the physical destruction was undeniable, so was the love and sense of community I felt all day.”