Santa Rosa Assistant Fire Marshal Paul Lowenthal said crews were dispatched to reports of stuck elevators at residential buildings and Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. He had no word yet on whether there were people in need of rescue inside. Across central Santa Rosa, residents reported broken gas lines and water pipes, sending firefighters across the city to survey the damage. Lowenthal, who lives near the epicenter in a neighborhood rebuilt after the 2017 fires, said he was preparing dinner when the quake struck. Things fell off the walls, light fixtures broke. “I turned off the stove and said, ‘Guess I’m going to work,’” she said. People in Santa Rosa reported feeling two large jolts, and the USGS said the tremor was felt as far away as Mendocino County and as far south as Santa Clara County. The ShakeAlert early warning system sent alerts that reached people moments before the first earthquake. “Well done to the California Earthquake Early Warning System,” wrote a Twitter user named Amanda Stupi. “I had enough time to put my child and me under the kitchen table. The husband had plenty of time to text us and make sure we saw a notification. My mind is kind of blown.” The USGS said that by the time the ShakeAlert warning went out on people’s cell phones, the quakes had already been felt within a 9-mile radius of the epicenter. People in Vallejo had an 11.4 second warning before the quakes hit. San Francisco received 18.8 seconds of warning and Oakland residents received 19.2 seconds of warning. ShakeAlert had warned that the quake could be as large as 5.0 on the Richter scale. Jana Pursley, a geophysicist for the USGS, said the second of the two earthquakes was an aftershock. “Aftershocks happen in response to movement around the fault, it’s like the way the fault rearranges itself after a larger event,” he said. At home near downtown Santa Rosa, Brooks Anderson was picking up trash to put out on trash night when he heard a hum and then a thump — like a semi truck had hit the house. A group of his oil paintings of the Maine coast fell from the walls. “I wasn’t sure if a plane had come down nearby – it was so loud,” said Anderson, an artist. Then moments later the second slam hit. More of Anderson’s works fell off the wall. Again, another set depicting Maine. His home, built in 1876, has suffered two devastating earthquakes that hit the Bay Area. The 1906 earthquake that destroyed San Francisco and the twin 1969 earthquakes that hit the North Bay. “They’ve been through some turmoil,” Anderson said. “What was up with that earthquake in Maine?” Tyler Silvey, 36, was at her home in Santa Rosa when the shaking began. Silvy, who moved to California in 2019, said he was scared because he had never experienced anything like it before. Silvey said he had only experienced one earthquake before this one in Oklahoma, but that it paled in comparison. “Before I got the alert, I thought someone was aggressively walking up the stairs to our apartment. It was two intense, sharp rounds of shaking,” he said. Silvy said his main priority was the safety of his children and that he had them crouch near the couch in his home away from walls away from hanging decorations. “I would rather not experience another (earthquake),” Silvy concluded of his experience. Police in Santa Rosa said they received no reports of serious injuries. Santa Rosa Councilwoman Victoria Fleming was canvassing for her re-election campaign in a neighborhood near the epicenter when she felt the first jolt and hit the ground. Her volunteer was getting up, but pulled her back in time for the aftershock. “People were coming out of their houses saying, ‘Victoria, what’s your earthquake policy?’ Fleming said. “I said, ‘If I’m re-elected I’m going to ban them.’ Tuesday’s earthquakes were the second and third to hit the SF Bay – on Sunday, a 2.9 earthquake shook the East Bay. Check out The Chronicle’s earthquake tracker for more information on recent earthquake events. Julie Johnson (she/her) and Jordan Parker (he/she) are staff writers for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Twitter: @jparkerwrites @juliejohnson
