Earthquakes

A magnitude 4.4 quake rattled through northeastern Kern County at 1:09 p.m. Saturday, but police said there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage. The quake struck about 16 miles south-southwest of Ridgecrest, at a depth of about five miles. Its epicenter was eight miles from the sparsely populated town of Randsburg, according to Caltech seismologist Bob Dollar. Dollar said the area has had four quakes in the magnitude-4 range since 1934. During the 1992 Landers quake activity, a 5.7 tremor struck west of Ridgecrest.

Authorities say a small earthquake struck the central part of the state, rattling windows and alarming residents. Won-Young Kim, a seismologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., says a quake with a preliminary magnitude of 3.0 was recorded at 10:34 p.m. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. Kim says small earthquakes are not unusual in that area.

A small earthquake struck Sunday, the latest in a series of minor tremors that have hit this hilly suburban community over the weekend. The 1.5-magnitude quake struck at 6:32 a.m. two miles west of the city and 8.3 miles below the surface, according to the United States Geological Survey. It was at least the seventh small quake in the area since Friday. The largest was a 1.9 magnitude temblor on Friday night, followed by a 1.8 jolt Saturday and others leading to Sunday's activity, according to a USGS website.

Authorities said there were no reports of damage or injury after a small earthquake struck the Bay Area on Thursday. The U.S. Geological Survey reported that a magnitude 3.7 temblor struck at 3:50 p.m. nine miles north of Morgan Hill. That's about 15 miles southeast of downtown San Jose.

4.0 quake one of many aftershocks A magnitude 4.0 earthquake shook the Hawthorne and Lennox area Tuesday afternoon, an aftershock of Sunday's 4.7 temblor, Caltech officials said. The earthquake occurred about 3:50 p.m. from a rupture about 7 1/2 miles underground, said seismologist Egill Hauksson. Preliminary data showed that it was less than a mile southeast of Sunday's quake, he said. The Los Angeles County Fire Department did not receive any reports of significant damage, although an apartment building in Long Beach was evacuated hours after the quake, due to roof damage.

Indonesian earthquakes: An article in Thursday's Section A about earthquakes that struck Indonesia this week said the second temblor, a magnitude 6.8 quake that hit Thursday, was centered about 100 miles off the island of Sumatra. It was centered under the island.

A week after Nation of Islam officials were evicted from their Western regional headquarters in Inglewood, a top minister in the organization delivered a message he said is from Louis Farrakhanpredicting that an earthquake will strike California within 30 days and possibly wipe the Golden State off the face of the earth. "The wrath of God will show itself in a major earthquake for this attempt to uproot upstanding citizens from their community," Minister Tony Muhammad said Friday.

The parking lot at Brotman Medical Center in Culver City looked like a MASH unit Thursday. People lay on gurneys, looking as if they were nursing broken bones or gasping for air because of smoke inhalation. Doctors and nurses appeared to hover over the victims at the makeshift triage unit, waving many of the stretchers into the hospital for more extensive treatment. But the injuries were not real; the doctors and nurses were just playing along.

A moderate-level volcanic hazard alert has ended at Mammoth Lakes, with the tapering off of a swarm of earthquakes in the Long Valley caldera southeast of the town, scientists of the U.S. Geological Survey said Monday. The strongest temblor over the four-day period of high quake activity, which began Thursday, registered 3.6.