July 8 (Reuters) – A magnitude 5.9 earthquake struck Northern California near the border with Nevada on Thursday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), but no injuries or serious damage was immediately reported.
The quake, initially registered at a magnitude 6.2 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) and the USGS, struck at a depth of 6 miles (10 km) and was centered about 150 miles east of California capital Sacramento, the USGS said on its website.
The quake was followed by a cluster of smaller tremors in the same region of the eastern Sierra Nevada range, the USGS reported.
“While there are no preliminary reports of damage or injuries, this is a rapidly evolving situation & more details will emerge in the coming hours,” the California governor’s Office of Emergency Services said on Twitter. “We are working closely with local officials to ensure they have the resources and support to rapidly respond to these earthquakes.”
While earthquakes registering magnitudes between 5.5 and 6.0 are capable of causing some damage to buildings and other structures, Thursday’s flurry of tremors struck in a relatively sparsely populated area.
Quakes of that size are not uncommon in seismically active California.
Reporting by Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Tom Hogue and Sandra Maler
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