*(CNN) — A 6.4 magnitude earthquake struck Northern California’s Eureka area early Tuesday, the US Geological Survey said, injuring at least two people, drawing reports of widespread damage to roads and homes, shaking residents from their sleep and leaving tens of thousands without electricity.
The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 2:34 a.m. PT, was in the Pacific about 15 miles from Fortuna, a city of about 12,000 people in Humboldt County, part of California’s forested Redwood Coast. Fortuna is near Eureka and about a 280-mile drive northwest of Sacramento.
More than three dozen smaller quakes — as powerful as a 4.6 magnitude — struck the area afterward, the survey reported.
Tuesday’s temblor comes a year after a 6.2 magnitude quake struck just off Humboldt County’s Cape Mendocino on December 20, 2021, and caused minor damage to buildings in the area.
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Most homes and businesses in Humboldt County were without power early Tuesday. More than 71,000 outages were reported shortly after 7:15 a.m. PT — out of 99,000 customers tracked in the county — according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us.
“Widespread damages to roads and homes” were being reported throughout Humboldt County, the county sheriff’s office said Tuesday morning on Twitter. At least two people were injured, the sheriff’s office said.
Wendy Pickett Monolias awoke to the shaking in Eureka.
“Once the shaking finally stopped, we got our flashlights and phones and looked around. Everything was in shambles,” Pickett Monolias said. “Things you wouldn’t expect to have fallen over or broken did. An entire cabinet in the bathroom fell over and broke apart.”
The quake spilled a number of items to the floor of Caroline Titus’ Ferndale-area home, a video she posted to Twitter shows. “This was a big one. Power is out now. House is a big mess,” Titus wrote.
Northeast of Ferndale, the temblor damaged part of the Fernbridge, which carries State Route 211 over the Eel River, CNN affiliate KRCR reported.
Part of the road at the bridge was cracked, an image tweeted by the California Department of Transportation showed.
“The bridge is closed while we conduct safety inspections due to possible seismic damage,” the tweet reads.
The main quake produced at least some shaking from coastal Oregon to south of San Jose, California, public reports collected by the survey show. It poses no tsunami threat, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
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