Rural area in Northern California jolted by its biggest quake since 1940, but no damage reported

The area in Mendocino County dotted with small, agricultural towns is 140 miles (225 kilometers) northeast of San Francisco.

Brie Leon and colleagues had just opened Club Calpella Restaurant when the building started shaking, rattling plates and liquor bottles.

“I had just turned the open sign on and went back into the kitchen, and that’s when it happened,” she said. “It almost felt like something hit the building.”

The restaurant is in Calpella, California, a town about 10 miles (16 kilometers) south of the epicenter and in a region of Mendocino County that has been struck by smaller quakes this year.

This was the biggest earthquake in nearly nine decades in the region, which is not on a major fault, said Lucy Jones, a veteran California seismologist.

“The area is not without earthquakes, but they’re usually smaller than this,” Jones said. She added that aftershocks are likely, but they’ll “probably stay on the low side.”

Three other quakes under a 2.7 magnitude struck near the epicenter within an hour.

Leon said the quake knocked frames off the walls and bottles off the shelves in the restaurant and the stockroom next door. She and other servers were cleaning up not long after to welcome customers for breakfast.

“It wasn’t a big, big quake, but things went everywhere,” she said.

Alan Harris and his family were at home in Kelseyville early Wednesday when he received an earthquake alert on his cellphone. Soon after, the house began shaking.

“I yelled downstairs immediately to my wife and daughter to make sure they were hanging on,” Harris said. “It was scary. You could hear things crashing, mostly on the third floor of the house.”

A security camera inside Harris’ home shook vigorously as the quake struck. A few loud, crashing sounds can be heard on the video footage before Harris calls out: “Is everyone OK?”

It lasted only about 30 seconds. Framed photos fell off the walls and a computer monitor was knocked over, Harris said. Nothing appeared badly damaged, he added, noting he found no structural damage to the house.

Harris said minor earthquakes are extremely common in the area where he’s lived for the past 10 years. But Wednesday's quake was “by leaps and bounds above everything else, the biggest we’ve felt here.”

Andrea Medina, who works at Cafe One in Fort Bragg, said she, too, felt it.

“Things were shaking,” she said. “But it’s done, not too strong.”

Fawnell Dale, a dispatch supervisor at the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office in Ukiah, described the shaking as mild and said they hadn’t gotten any reports of any damage or injuries.

Nearly 657,000 earthquake early warning alerts were sent by the MyShake App throughout Northern California, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said. Cal OES had not received any reports of damage or injuries but it was coordinating with authorities to evaluate impacts, the office said in a statement.

Weber reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press reporter Russ Bynum contributed from Savannah, Georgia.