A magnitude 4.7 earthquake -- centered under the Santa Ana mountain range -- shook southern California at 10:29 Sunday morning.

Geologists confirmed preliminary automated reports that the earthquake's epicenter was eight miles west-northwest of the Riverside County city of Lake Elsinore and about 50 miles southwest of the Los Angeles Civic Center.

©USGS


"There were no injuries reported to us at this time," said Jody Hagemann, spokeswoman for the Riverside County Fire Department. "When there's an earthquake over 4.3, we send out an order to all of the stations so firefighters take all of their apparatus out of the basement until we are sure that everything is cleared."

"We haven't heard about any injuries related to the earthquake at this time," said Sgt. Denver Saucier of Riverside County Sheriff's Department. He also did not receive reports of any damages.

The Orange County sheriff's office reported no initial reports of damage. The quake's epicenter was near the Riverside-Orange County line in an uninhabited wilderness area of the Cleveland National Forest.

The quake also did not affect any transmission lines, or affect power generation at the two nuclear generating units operated by Southern California Edison at San Onofre, about 25 miles from the epicenter.

Santiago Peak is a major radio relay site for public services, but there are no reports of damage there.

A reporter felt a strong shock at an office in Riverside, about 25 miles northeast of the epicenter.

Reports of shaking came in from as far away as Marina Del Rey and Porter Ranch in the north San Fernando Valley.

An Escondido police dispatcher said "it just felt like a low rumble."

But persons in Corona, about 10 miles north of the epicenter, said they felt a strong jolt. One man told Los Angeles radio station KFWB that he felt "an extremely strong jolt that opened the shower door up, and then the house swayed back and forth." The caller said things fell off shelves but there was no serious damage at his house.

The epicenter was near, and about 1.6 miles beneath, the summit of Santiago Peak, the largest peak in the Santa Ana Mountains range east of Orange County.

Police dispatchers at several agencies in northern San Diego County said they did not feel the earthquake, and did not get any calls about it until a reporter called.

Ten aftershocks ranging from magnitude 1.6 to 2.5 rattled the mountain range in the two hours following the main shock, which hit at 10:29 a.m.