Magnitude 4.4 earthquake rattles Los Angeles, felt over wide area

A magnitude 4.4 earthquake centered in El Sereno rattled the Los Angeles area Monday afternoon.

The quake was felt over a wide swath of Southern California, but there were no immediate reports of major damage.

The earthquake caused a water pipe to burst at Pasadena City Hall, where water leaked for about an hour before it was turned off, city spokesperson Lisa Derderian said.

It also caused an issue with elevators at the building, and an employee was stuck in one of the cars for about 20 minutes before being let out. The elevators will be closed until they can be repaired.

The Pasadena Fire Department is conducting surveys around the city, and an engineer is being sent to the Rose Bowl as a precaution to assess for any issues.

Residents should take the earthquake as a reminder to be prepared for a major disaster. People should always be on guard for a larger quake, officials said.

Darlene Hampton, a senior office assistant in the Pasadena city manager's office, was helping a resident at City Hall when the shaking started.

"She was having a little bad day," Hampton said about the resident. "I was able to calm her down, and we just said, 'Everything's going to work out, right?' And then the earthquake hit. But we were doing a little prayer too."

All employees and customers were able to leave the building safely, Hampton said, and wait outside until the Fire Department arrived.

"The funny thing is, as she's going out the door, I said, 'You see how quickly God works?' "

The shaking brought a short jolt of up-and-down motion that knocked shampoo bottles off the shelf at the Target in Alhambra, as well as the "shredded cheese" sign off a refrigerated aisle, and shoppers started calling loved ones to see whether they were OK.

In Highland Park, windows rattled and dogs barked, and coffee spilled off a table. Elsewhere in Alhambra, photos were knocked off shelves, drawers opened and shoes were thrown from a rack.

The temblor struck at 12:20 p.m. The preliminary epicenter was in El Sereno, about 1,000 feet southwest of Huntington Drive and Collis Avenue.

The strongest shaking was considered "moderate," or Level 5 on the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale , where the shaking was felt by nearly everyone and capable of overturning unstable objects. Moderate shaking was experienced in downtown Los Angeles, South Pasadena, Highland Park, Mount Washington, Alhambra, Monterey Park, Boyle Heights, East L.A., South L.A., Huntington Park, Bell, Maywood, Bell Gardens, Cudahy and South Gate, according to the USGS.

People across the region felt shaking strong enough to knock items from shelves, including a bottle of bay leaves in Koreatown. The seventh floor of The Times' headquarters in El Segundo, near Los Angeles International Airport, swayed as lights flickered and televisions that hang on walls swayed. In the Los Feliz-East Hollywood area, car alarms sounded, candles were knocked off tables and people exclaimed, "That was scary!" Windows at businesses in Los Feliz shook.

In Silver Lake, a loud, sharp jolt lasted five to 10 seconds, shaking the exhaust hood in a kitchen. Windows rattled and the walls shook at one home in Atwater Village.

In Arcadia, people felt both a shaking and a rolling motion, lasting about 20 seconds or so — like a nearby train rolling through. One person in South Pasadena felt a very sharp, loud jolt, sending her under the table, but nothing broke or fell. A person in Mid-City felt a sizable jolt on the ground floor.

Dozens of Inglewood community members and teachers crowded outside Morningside High School, just a mile south of SoFi Stadium, to eat lunch after an event attended by Jimmy Iovine, co-founder of Interscope Records, when the ground rumbled for a full second.

"That a quake?" a teacher asked a colleague.

At Fatty Mart convenience store in Mar Vista, people in the seating area simply stared at one another when the shaking arrived. Two continued munching on their food, while another kept working at his computer.

"Is this an earthquake?" someone said five seconds into the shaking, which lasted for 10 or 15 seconds longer.

Seismologist Lucy Jones, a Caltech research associate, said the earthquake occurred on the same overall fault network that produced the 1987 Whittier Narrows magnitude 5.9 earthquake, which is known as the Puente Hills thrust fault system.

A magnitude 7.5 quake on the Puente Hills thrust fault system — which runs under highly populated areas of L.A. and Orange counties — could kill 3,000 to 18,000 people, according to the USGS and Southern California Earthquake Center.

That’s worse than the hypothetical death toll of 1,800 people from a plausible magnitude 7.8 earthquake that begins on the southern San Andreas fault near the Mexican border and unzips all the way to the mountains of L.A. County.

Many Southern California residents received alerts on their phones warning the quake was coming, another win for the region's earthquake early warning system . Some got the warning just after the jolt hit, as they were quite close to the epicenter.

There were no reports of damage, the fire departments for the city and county of Los Angeles said. The South Pasadena Police Department has not received any calls for service, other than multiple reports of home alarms being set off by the earthquake.

Anthony Montiel, facility director with the Lincoln Heights Senior Center, said there were no reports of any injuries or emergency calls for assistance.

He said for the most part, everyone kept calm — save for himself.

"I'm more scared than anyone else, with them being seniors and having more life experience," Montiel said with a laugh.

"It felt like a truck hit the building. It was like a strong jolt that lasted a few seconds, and nothing like a rolling earthquake," he added.

When a quake struck Bakersfield last week, millions got the alert.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, Monday's temblor was felt across the L.A. basin and as far away as San Diego and Ventura.

Those who have iPhones can get earthquake early warnings by downloading the free MyShake app, developed by UC Berkeley and provided in partnership with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, which alerts users in California, Oregon and Washington. San Diego County also offers the free SD Emergency app, which includes the ShakeReadySD earthquake early-warning tool.

People who don’t have smartphones or haven’t installed early-warning apps can still get quake alerts on their cellphones — but only for those in which a higher magnitude or higher level of shaking is projected at their location. Those alerts are sent through the Wireless Emergency Alert system, similar to Amber Alerts.

The shaking was light enough for some to make jokes.

In a downtown L.A. courtroom, a fire alarm went off multiple times a couple hours after the shaking.

“It could be a delayed reaction to the earthquake?” said Judge Sam Ohta, from the ninth floor of the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center, which shook for several seconds around lunchtime. “1971 building.”

“The county’s early warning system,” someone joked.

Times staff writers Alene Tchekmedyian, Ashley Ahn, Hector Becerra, Andrew J. Campa, Stephanie Chavez, Cindy Chang, Karen Kaplan, Defne Karabatur, Maria L. La Ganga, Sandra McDonald, Brittny Mejia, Emily Alpert Reyes, Joseph Serna and Rachel Uranga contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times .