Central Coast Quake Kills 2

PASO ROBLES, Calif. —  A deadly magnitude 6.5 earthquake shuddered through California’s Central Coast on Monday morning, crumpling a historic building here and killing two people.

The temblor -- the strongest in the region’s modern history -- smashed shop windows, set off house fires and interrupted power service through parts of San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara counties. Its ripples moved across the state, giving Los Angeles and San Francisco a series of gentle, rolling shakes.

The state’s Central Coast was hit hardest. Barrels of wine went tumbling at vineyards, California 46 cracked and shifted, and drivers scrounged for fuel as power failures knocked out gas pumps.

Rescue efforts centered on a square in downtown Paso Robles, where emergency crews shoveled through a rusty silt of pulverized brick for much of the day, looking for survivors they feared were trapped in a toppled shopping strip.

The roof slid off a two-story brick building that framed the north side of the town’s central park, creating a pile of rubble that killed two women who worked in a boutique.

“I saw it crack the entire length of the building, about 150 feet, right above the awning line,” said Bill Ridino, 51, who was driving by in his truck. The Mastagni Building, 116 years old, and made of unreinforced masonry that had not been retrofitted, “just wiggled forward and collapsed. It just scissored over,” he said.

The bodies of Jennifer Myrick, 19, of Atascadero and Marilyn Zafuto, 55, of Paso Robles were recovered on the edge of the street outside Ann’s Dress Shop, one of four businesses in the building. Apparently, they were running out of the store when they were hit by debris. “They were trying to get away,” said Paso Robles Police Sgt. Bob Adams.

The quake struck as many Californians rushed to complete their Christmas shopping and as the state tightened security in response to a heightened terror alert. The first rumbling prompted many to fear a man-made disaster.

Instead, the San Simeon earthquake struck at 11:15 a.m., triggered when one side of a fault lifted over the other. It was followed in the next three hours by nine aftershocks of magnitude 4.0 or stronger. Though far less intense than the 1994 Northridge quake, it was the state’s strongest jolt since 1999, scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey said.

The quake’s epicenter was about 11 miles north of Cambria and six miles northeast of San Simeon. Hearst Castle, the historic mansion built by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, suffered little damage, but visitors were immediately evacuated.

The worst destruction occurred in a string of towns along U.S. 101. The north-south corridor remained open, though landslides closed smaller roads.

Paso Robles suffered the only confirmed fatalities. An old farming and ranching town amid a region that has recently reinvented itself as a hotbed of winemaking, the town’s charming downtown features buildings that date from the 1880s.

The quake destroyed one of them, the Mastagni Building, burying a row of cars in bricks and other debris. The temblor’s force blew the clock tower -- mounted on the building’s corner -- across the street, where it plummeted to a stop in front of Marlowe’s Interiors.

“All of a sudden it started shaking and rolling,” said Barbara Lewin, who owns a cosmetics and clothing shop nearby. “Somebody shouted, ‘Everybody out!’ And we started to run. We got past the sidewalk by the cars and all of a sudden there was dust and debris flying everywhere. Across the street, the entire building just came down right in front of us like a waterfall. It was very traumatic. We’re very fortunate it wasn’t worse.”

Diane Reed’s store, Rose in the Woods, and two of her cars were destroyed when the shopping strip’s roof buckled. She cried as she recalled seeing her daughter, who works across the street, running toward the ruins, thinking Reed was trapped inside.

The earthquake destroyed the House of Bread, a business owned by former Atascadero Mayor Mike Arrambide and his wife. Karen Arrambide, 59, was in the shop preparing gift baskets when a huge bang shattered the front window.

“Everything fell in and became very dark and very dusty,” she said. “Then it became light and that was because the second story was gone.”

She escaped with bumps and scrapes but was grateful it was not worse.

When the ground started to move, Olivia Aguirre, 11, was shopping around the corner from the collapsed building with her mother, Lena, and her friend Meagan Hernandez, 13.

“Those stores were full of people for Christmas,” Lena Aguirre said. “We started swaying back and forth and it seemed like the door kept getting smaller because everybody was trying to get through the door at the same time.”

They squeezed out and ran to the town’s main square.

“We saw the bricks just flying off the building like they were being thrown,” Hernandez said.

The Mastagni Building was one of about a dozen structures in downtown Paso Robles that have yet to meet new state earthquake standards. Its owners had until 2018 to complete the work, city building officials said.

About 200 police and firefighters worked into the night, digging through the rubble to make sure they had found everyone caught in the disaster.

“We’re still in rescue mode today,” Adams said. “We won’t be in recovery mode until tomorrow at least.”

Forty people, including two from the site of the roof collapse, were treated at local hospitals for bumps, bruises and broken bones, as well as chest pains. Paso Robles Mayor Frank R. Mecham barely escaped injury. He works as a financial advisor about a block from the damaged building.

“I was in my office talking to one of my elderly clients and the earthquake just started shaking everything,” he said. “I shoved her under my desk and realized I had nowhere to go.”

Deciding safety outweighed etiquette, he ducked under the desk on top of her.

A team and engineers from San Luis Obispo surveyed 82 buildings in Paso Robles and at least a dozen have volunteered to help examine structures today, helping city officials establish which are sound enough for occupants to return and which must be razed.

Seismologists could not pinpoint the fault line that generated Monday’s earthquake, but two smaller ones, the San Simeon and Nacimiento faults, are nearby.

Their size probably helped contain the temblor’s worst effects.

At its strongest, scientists estimated the quake achieved an intensity of about one-quarter to one-third of the Northridge earthquake.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was meeting with advisors in his state Capitol office Monday morning when his chief of staff, Patricia Clarey, told him the earthquake had occurred, his spokeswoman Margita Thompson said.

“He just monitored the situation throughout the day,” she said.

Schwarzenegger proceeded with a scheduled meeting on homeland security, but it wound up incorporating updates on the earthquake, Thompson said.

Among those at the meeting were top officials from the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, the California National Guard and the California Highway Patrol.

Schwarzenegger will survey the damage in San Luis Obispo County today.

At the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, one guest fled out the door. He returned moments after the shaking stopped. “I don’t know why I did that,” he told reservation manager Kay Vallely. “I’m from L.A. I’m used to earthquakes.”

At Hearst Castle, the temblor added unexpected drama to Monday’s tours.

Ken and Cindy Hively were standing in the main dining hall of Casa Grande when the chandeliers started to shake. After a long roll and rumble, the lights went out. Out of the corner of her eye, Cindy Hively, photo editor for The Times Calendar section, saw a shadow.

“There was this giant candelabra weaving side to side,” she said. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of here.’ ”

Their tour guide urged their group outside, but many seemed stunned into immobility.

Some visitors said they had never been in an earthquake before. A British woman said she had toured Universal Studios the previous day. For a second, she wondered if she had somehow stumbled onto another ride.

“They were freaked,” said Ken Hively, a Times photographer. “Kids were crying. A little girl was really panicked as her mother carried her out.”

The Hivelys got out of the massive building -- built with reinforced concrete in the 1920s and 1930s -- to the crash and tinkle of Christmas ornaments falling to the ground.

In Cambria, a popular getaway spot bracketed by pine-covered mountains and rugged coastline, the temblor rattled the usually laid-back natives.

The earthquake knocked out windows along the town’s main commercial strip, one after another: the liquor store, the old bank building and an art gallery. Firefighters said it also may have caused an apartment blaze.

“It was like a huge roar and a washing machine off-balance,” said Kathie Harper, owner of Destiny Gallery. “It was like a whoosh and everybody just ran out in the street.”

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Polakovic and Kelley reported from Paso Robles; Fields was in Los Angeles.