2 Quakes Jolt Southland : Minor Damage in 4.5, 4.3 Shakes; None in O.C. Reported : Los Angeles High-Rises Wobble

In less than a half-hour, two brief but intense earthquakes wrenched a vast area of Los Angeles this morning, causing slight damage, setting downtown high-rises swaying, showering ceiling tiles down onto a Board of Supervisors hearing and forcing evacuations, but otherwise causing no apparent injuries.

The quake and aftershock, 25 minutes apart, were also only a fraction apart in strength.

Cal Tech seismologist Kate Hutton said the first shock, at 9:57 a.m., measured 4.5 on the Richter scale, and lasted about five seconds. The second, at 10:22 a.m., registered at a magnitude of 4.3.

The epicenter was fixed near Montebello, along the same Elysian Park fault as the October, 1987, Whittier quake, which killed three people and measured 5.9 on the Richter scale. The Elysian Park fault extends from Montebello through East Los Angeles, skirting north of downtown to Elysian Park.

No Orange County Damage

In Orange County, there were no reports of damage. Marilee Miller, acting manager of the Emergency Management Division, the county’s disaster nerve center, said none of the public safety agencies in the county received any reports of damage.

As a precaution, however, county officials did activate the emergency broadcast system and issue a bulletin to local radio stations announcing that a quake had occurred, Miller said.

Police and fire departments in Orange County reported receiving phone calls from residents as far south as San Clemente wanting to know if there had been an earthquake or other details.

Todd Wulffson, an attorney with the law firm of O’Melveny and Myers, was in his 17th-floor office in Newport Beach when the quake hit.

“I’ve got this big old desk and it moved sideways,” Wulffson said. “Everything kind of moves back and forth when the Santa Ana winds blow and during earthquakes. . . . We’re kind of used to them by now, that’s what’s scary.”

The damage caused by today’s temblor was minimal and the toll to residents was confined to the nervous systems of thousands of office workers and schoolchildren who evacuated shaking buildings.

“It’s bad enough the Lakers lost. Now we have to have this,” groused Southern California Gas Co. official Ralph Cohen from his 11th-floor office in downtown Los Angeles.

Hit by Acoustic Tile

One acoustic tile dislodged by the quake struck and slightly injured a woman in a sixth-floor hallway of the Superior Courts building on Hill Street. At a Board of Supervisors budget hearing, about 50 people in the audience ran for the exits when the quake shook loose ceiling tiles.

Across the Southland, residents and businesses reported the standard recitation of inanimate casualties that accompany such moderate-sized shakers: A fallen wine rack and “the usual jars of pickles” at a Vons market in El Monte; broken windows at a video store and shoe store along Brooklyn Avenue in East Los Angeles, at a Bank of America building downtown, and at a gas company training center in Pico Rivera; a slight earthslide on Soto Street in El Sereno and cracked windows on the ground floor of Parker Center, the Los Angeles Police headquarters.