Earthquake

I was superintendent of building and general manager of the Department of Building and Safety in Los Angeles from 1940 until my retirement in 1961. During the 1950s Mexico City had an earthquake almost equal in intensity to the one it had recently. Many buildings were demolished, thousands of buildings were badly damaged, many people were killed and injured. The damage was very severe and widespread. The City of Los Angeles requested me to go to Mexico City and investigate the damage to building construction, the enforcement of building regulations and render a report on the entire disaster.

No immediate damage was reported Wednesday after a magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck about two miles from Yorba Linda, authorities said. The quake, which hit at 1:31 p.m., was felt in Laguna Beach, Riverside and parts of Los Angeles, according to U.S. Geological Survey's " Did you feel it?" website. According to the USGS, the epicenter was five miles from Placentia, six miles from Chino Hills, eight miles from Anaheim and 29 miles from downtown Los Angeles. “It felt pretty big,” said Tawnya Villanueva, a stylist at the Jabez hair salon on Yorba Linda Boulevard.

TEHRAN -- A powerful earthquake shook southern Iran on Tuesday afternoon, killing dozens of people and devastating entire towns, Iranian media reported. At least 31 people died in the quake, including three victims under a collapsed house in the small town of Shanbe, according to Fars News Agency and the Tabnak news website. State media reported at least 20 were killed. Earlier news reports had put the death toll at three or four people. The U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday's earthquake measured magnitude 6.3; Iranian state media reported that it measured 6.1. There were no immediate reports of damage at the Bushehr nuclear power plant, about 60 miles from the reported epicenter of the earthquake.

What by historical standards was a mild earthquake shook parts of as many as nine states on Tuesday in the latest rumble along the fabled New Madrid Seismic Zone. The quake, measuring 4.0, struck at 3:58 a.m. CST near East Prairie, Mo., a rural town of some 3,200 people off of Interstate 55, which connects St. Louis with Memphis, Tenn., according to the U.S. Geological Survey website. The quake was felt in Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee and there were scattered reports from four other states including as far away as Georgia.

It was a scary day if you were living in Sochi, Russia, on Wednesday. During the early morning hours, a gas pipeline that feeds a local power station exploded, then in an unrelated incident later in the morning , a magnitude 5.3 earthquake rocked the city. Sochi is to be host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, scheduled for Feb. 7-23. There were no reported injuries from either incident. Russia President Vladimir Putin ordered authorities to inspect Olympic sites, particularly those under construction, to ensure that there was no damage.

MEXICO CITY - A deadly earthquake rattled Guatemala on Wednesday, knocking out electricity, destroying dozens of buildings, and killing at least 39 people, with many more missing or buried, President Otto Perez Molina said. The quake, which officials called the most powerful temblor to hit the Central American country in 36 years, occurred at 10:35 a.m. along the northern part of Guatemala's Pacific coast. The U.S. Geological Survey measured it as magnitude 7.4, while Guatemala's National Seismological Institute ranked it as magnitude 7.2. Guatemalan officials initially confirmed three deaths in San Marcos, a city in the country's western interior, but continued revising the number upward as the day went on. "We must regret the deaths of 39 people," Perez told journalists during an afternoon tour of some of the worst-hit areas, according to the newspaper El Nuevo Siglo.

Just as Egypt has been cast as the Twitter revolution, so Friday's massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami was destined to become the Twitter disaster. In 140-character bites, the story unfolded: the shock and terror; the sense of human frailty mixed with lifesaving information; the messages of those seeking comfort and those seeing some kind of divine retribution, all mixing at hyper-speed. "Poor japan," said one typical sentiment. "Prayers to Japan and anyone in the path of the tsunami," said another.

A magnitude-4.3 earthquake centered just offshore rattled the Northern California coast Sunday morning but caused no damage, authorities reported. The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake's epicenter was in the Pacific Ocean about 28 miles southwest of Ferndale, a quaint town of 1,370 people filled with dozens of well-preserved Victorian homes and store fronts. The temblor occurred at about 10:25 a.m. ALSO: Hiker killed at Eaton Canyon was 17-year-old girl Pain doctor's office raided in prescription drug abuse probe Bauhaus rocker Peter Murphy denies he was drunk when arrested dan.weikel@latimes.com

One of the biggest earthquakes in recorded history rocked Chile on Saturday, killing more than 300 people, toppling buildings and freeways, and setting off sirens thousands of miles away as governments scrambled to protect coastal residents from the ensuing tsunami. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet declared parts of the country "catastrophe zones" in the wake of the magnitude 8.8 quake, which was centered offshore, about 70 miles north of the port city of Concepcion. With images of Haiti's devastation from an earthquake last month still fresh, the world woke up to a new disaster and fears of another catastrophic toll.

Thousands of people from around the Los Angeles area reported feeling a series of small earthquakes that struck the Santa Monica Bay on Monday. A magnitude 3.7 quake that hit about four miles off Hermosa Beach around 5 p.m. brought more than 3,000 responses to the U.S. Geological Survey's "Did You Feel It?" survey site.