‘Really, really scary’ in Chino Hills quake epicenter
Marybelle Rivas, a floral designer at Chino Hills Floral Company, first sensed the earthquake in her feet. She ran into a doorway in the back room as the ground jolted. When the quake hit its peak, glass vases started falling from shelves and displays, and the mirror paneling on the ceiling began to warp.
“It got kind of abstract,” Rivas said. “I could see the reflections from the street, see the cars, everything.”
After 15 seconds or so, the quake let up, leaving more shaken nerves than significant damage at its epicenter, according to early reports.
“It was really, really scary,” Rivas said.
In the bull’s eye of Chino Hills, a few hours after the quake, officials said they had no reports of injuries or major damage. The affluent city of 78,957 in the southwest corner of San Bernardino County has relatively new housing, mostly built in the 1980s and 1990s.
At the Crazy Coyote Mexican Grill, server Maria Ruiz, 21, said she “just kind of like froze” when the shaking started. The picture frames on the wall started moving and then she “heard what sounded like a really loud rattle,” Ruiz said. In the kitchen, cups started falling over. “I was pretty scared,” she said.
By about 12:15 p.m., things were back to normal in the restaurant, and she had to get off the phone to serve customers.
At the Western Hills Golf & Country Club in Chino Hills near where the U.S. Geological Survey pinpointed the quake’s epicenter, golfers felt “a little rolling and then it hit hard,” said Brian Haggett, the course’s assistant pro.
“A lot of stuff fell off the walls. Other than that, everything is OK,” he said.
One player told Haggett he was bending over on a green to mark his ball when the quake hit. “He stumbled forward and nearly fell over,” Haggett said.
San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Jodi Miller said there were no reports of injuries or structural damage.
Nevertheless, Miller said, the department was inundated with calls from people who were frightened.
Phones in the Chino Hills sheriff’s station were working only intermittently, but the dispatch center had no disruptions, she added.
The earthquake was one of the strongest to hit urban Southern California since the Northridge quake in 1992, giving an ominous reminder of the forces beneath the ground.
Connie Fleagle said she was driving to work at Starbucks when “my car kind of switched into the next lane.” When she got to her store, she found that many of the coffee bags had fallen off the shelves.
Bob Bodnar runs Bad Bob’s BBQ in Chino Hills. “It was just a huge shocker,” he said. “It knocked off our clock. The windows were pulsing. It was scary. The windows kind of shook and the lights shook.”
John Devnui, 54, was working on a scaffold in the same shopping center when he heard a big bang and people started screaming at him to get down. “I thought someone crashed into it. It was really rockin’ and rollin’.”
Times staff writers Steve Marble, Jessica Garrison and Joe Mozingo contributed to this report.
Leave a Reply