Northern California quake

Napa damaged, more than 100 hurt in Northern California quake

Henry K. Lee, Will Kane, Vivian Ho and Marisa 

A magnitude-6.0 earthquake struck the North Bay early Sunday, injuring more than 100 people, causing extensive damage to dozens of buildings in downtown Napa and Vallejo and sparking a fire that destroyed sixhomes, authorities said.

The quake, the largest in the Bay Area since the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, struck 3 miles northwest of American Canyon at 3:20 a.m., the U.S. Geological Survey said. It was felt as far away as Chico and Fresno, the USGS said.

Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for California and said state resources would be mustered to areas affected by the quake, including Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties.

Hardest-hit was Napa, about 6 miles northwest of the quake's epicenter. Walt Mickens, CEO at Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa, said 172 people were treated Sunday at the hospital, including a 13-year-old identified by neighbors as Nicholas Dillon. He was hurt inside his family's home on Eva Street when a chimney fell on him during a slumber party, and was airlifted from Napa to the UC Davis Children's Hospital in Sacramento, where hospital spokeswoman Phyllis Brown said he was in serious condition.

In all, Mickens said, 12 people were admitted to Queen of the Valley and treated for injuries related to the quake, the majority with broken bones. By late Sunday, just one person remained in critical condition at the hospital; the others were in serious or stable condition.

The majority of other injuries were cuts and bruises from broken glass and falling objects, he said.

Many residents were unable to return home Sunday evening because of damage sustained in the quake. Napa officials said 33 buildings have been red-tagged, meaning residents cannot return to them until authorities determine they are safe, and they are only one-third of the way through assessing buildings.

Napa Mayor Jill Techel was among the displaced. She returned from a conference in Monterey on Sunday morning, and said when she when she first arrived downtown, she felt, "scared and sad."

"My neighbors are staying strong but you can see tears right behind their eyes," she said.

Throughout the region, said State Office of Emergency Services Director Mark Ghilarducci said, about 90 to 100 homes have been red-tagged. Officials won't have a tally of how many people have been displaced until late Sunday, Ghilarducci said, when they begin showing up at emergency shelters.

"We have a handle on what's happening at this point," he said at a late afternoon news conference, adding that state officials do not yet have damage cost estimates and are deciding whether to apply for federal disaster assistance.

State geologist John Parrish said all the region's bridges have been checked and are safe. Measurements taken from the Carquinez Bridge revealed the span took quite a hit during the quake, but sustained no damage.

While officials warned residents to be prepared for aftershocks, Parrish said the biggest risk had passed by Sunday afternoon, as the highest probability of aftershocks is within the first hour after a quake. In all, he said, 50 to 60 aftershocks were recorded, the largest a magnitude 3.6.

"We feel it unlikely now that there will be a large follow-up earthquake to this one," Parrish said Sunday afternoon. "We do not expect there will be much larger aftershocks, but we expect they will continue for several weeks." Parrish said the soft ground in the Napa Valley helped mitigate damage by absorbing some of movement.

Still, said Ghilarducci, "It took half day to get our hands around the complexity of the event," due to power outages.

In all, 70,000 Pacific Gas & Electric Co. customers lost power in the quake, but by early evening, the utility had restored power to the majority. A PG&E statement said about 7,300 customers in Napa County remained in the dark. Most customers can expect to be back online by the end of Sunday, according to the utility.

Sixty water mains and at least 50 gas lines also broke in the quake. PG&E said 439 people called to report gas leaks Sunday, and by early evening, the vast majority had been investigated. Beginning Monday, the utility plans to fan out across the impacted areas to conduct courtesy gas safety checks.

There were also problems in Vallejo, where officials said 41 buildings were damaged, including businesses, several homes and a church. On one residential block, nearly every brick chimney had collapsed, including two that fell on a car.

"It's bad any way you look at it, but it could have been a heck of a lot worse," said Rep. Mike Thompson, D-Napa.

Napa City Manager Mike Parness said that "most of the (Napa) Valley is operating as normal" and that most of the damage was confined to a few locations. But officials said it will be weeks until those areas are cleaned up.

Officials at Queen of the Valley set up a triage tent in the back parking lot of the emergency room. In the first hours after the quake, ambulances were arriving every few minutes dropping off patients.

A fire at a Napa mobile home park on Orchard Avenue destroyed four homes and damaged two others as firefighters improvised to put out the blaze, with a water main broken and unavailable.

In downtown Napa, bricks, concrete chunks and broken glass littered the streets. About 15 buildings were red-tagged, , and numerous other buildings were yellow-tagged and were open only on a limited basis, officials said. Most of the yellow-tagged buildings suffered damage such as broken windows, Parness said.

Most of the windows were blown out of the air traffic control tower at the Napa County Airport. The structure was spared major damage, but it will be unusable for several weeks, said Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Across Napa, dozens of unreinforced chimneys toppled, tilted or leaned precariously from houses. "It was just like a train hit the house," Cathy Hunt said as she surveyed a pile of bricks that used to make up the chimney of her home on the 500 block of Montgomery Street.

At Napa Barrel Care, a wine warehouse just south of the city, Carole Meredith surveyed an array of tumbled barrels.

"We're physically fine but we're emotionally shell-shocked," Meredith said. Although it is too soon to know the extent of loss, she said, "there is a lake of wine on the floor."

Because wines from the bountiful 2013 vintage are mostly still in barrel, "there's just going to be huge losses," said Meredith, who owns the Lagier Meredith winery on Mount Veeder. "This is going to be a really expensive earthquake for the wine business."

At the Don Perico Mexican restaurant on First Street, there were no outward signs of problems on the exterior of the building. But inside, a pile of bricks stood several feet high.

At the Bounty Hunter restaurant down the street, broken wine bottles littered the floor. But the eatery's "holy grail" case, containing prized bottles worth up to $80,000, remained intact. "It's a disaster, but we'll clean up," said employee Will Wright. "We'll get through it."

Andrea Griego of Napa said the quake knocked over her bedroom dresser, temporarily immobilizing her.
"It was so scary," said Griego, who suffered a large bruise and cut.

Napa's Old County Courthouse and the post office were among the buildings that sustained damage. Emergency workers usually stationed there were moved to the sheriff's office.

Residents and city officials said the toll would have been far greater had the quake struck on Saturday, when thousands of people were downtown enjoying the Napa Blues, Brews and BBQ event in downtown Napa.

Although damage appeared to be worst in Napa, there were also problems elsewhere. In downtown Vallejo, a large chunk of bricks fell off the First Methodist Church at Sonoma Boulevard and Virginia Street. Several older homes near the church lost their chimneys.

Glass covered buckled sidewalks on a six-block stretch of businesses on the west end of Tennessee Street, the city's primary link to the former Mare Island Naval Shipyard. Sixteen water mains in the city were broken, city officials said.

On Georgia and Virginia streets on downtown Vallejo, several buildings were evacuated after a 19th-century brick building partially collapsed. The city engineer was on scene investigating, but fire officials said the building, the former City of Paris department store, would likely be demolished.

Building owner Buck Kamphausen, who is also the city mortician, said the building was under renovation. The roof of collapsed into the roof of a neighboring building, falling through to the floor. No one was injured.

Officials were blocking off the sidewalks on both Georgia and Virginia streets. Firemen said the extent of the damage would likely not be known until Monday, as many of the shops on the commercial strip were closed Sunday and owners had not come to survey the damage.

The First Methodist Church on Sonoma and Virgin streets also suffered damage to its bell tower. On Fern Street, a leafy block in the city's Garden District dotted with 1920's bungalows, residents were surveying the slew of collapsed brick chimneys and starting to clean up.

At the end of the block, a brick building that houses a Real Estate brokerage was red-tagged. Brick mason Marshall Foster was using a jackhammer to take down the top half of a damaged chimney at one home. "It was like something exploded," said Annette Millhollin, whose chimney, along with her neighbor's, tumbled onto her driveway, crushing her Oldsmobile.

Chris Mariano, who lives next to the brokerage firm, said it "felt like a bomb went off," when the quake struck at 3:20 a.m., knocking down all the dishes in his home. "It went on forever," he said. "I've never been in a quake that close to the epicenter."

There were widespread reports of power outages, gas leaks and flooding in the North Bay. In addition to the power outages, Napa'stwo water treatment plants were undamaged, but water-main breaks knocked out service to some areas. The water that is available is safe to drink, Napa officials said.

Still, the recovery could take "a week or so because we have a lot of things to get buttoned up," said Napa's director of public works Jacques LaRochelle.

Caltrans checked the Bay Area's toll bridges after the quake and found them to be safe. On Highway 121 in the North Bay, 30 feet of asphalt was cracked, but the road was open.

Scientists said the quake was 6.7 miles deep and may have hit on the West Napa Fault. It was the largest in the Bay Area since the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta quake killed 62 people on Oct. 17, 1989.

The U.S. Geological Survey initially said the quake measured magnitude 6.0, then upgraded it to 6.1 later in the day. One of the worst scenes of damage was at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park at 1040 Orchard Ave. near Mark Way, where a fire burned at least four homes. A broken water main hobbled firefighters' efforts to control the blaze.

Water trucks were brought to the scene, enabling firefighters to control the blaze before 6 a.m. There were no injuries. The cause of the fire was unknown. PG&E said its natural-gas lines were not responsible.

Ray Kauffman, 68, said that as soon as he saw the smoke at one of the mobile homes, "I went home to get my crescent wrench but I couldn't get to it."

"The flames were too much when I got there," Kauffman said as he looked at the remains of his neighbor's home. A woman who asked to be identified as Theresa said she had trouble getting out of her boyfriend's home because it shifted off the foundation. She went across the street and watched the home burn to the ground.

"It was really scary," she said. "We were really lucky to get out. We lost a kitten, CoCo." Firefighters extinguished two other residential fires in Napa, officials said.

Throughout the Bay Area, many people were jolted awake by the quake. Others who were already up were similarly jarred.

Erica Gregory, who was brewing coffee while working by herself at the 24-hour Shell gas station on Highway 29 in Vallejo, said items started to fly off the shelves when the quake hit.

"It was nerve-wracking," Gregory said. "You just have to stand there and take it." Lily Atkinson, 10, said she was playing solitaire when her bed, and then her entire room, began shaking.
"I grabbed onto my head and held on for dear life," she said.

In Benicia, several miles from the epicenter, the quake was strong enough to knock pictures off mantles. Darryl Sismil, owner of Marin Computer Service in Santa Rosa, described the tremor as "just a rolling sensation. It felt like I was on a boat in the bay."

At the 24-hour Napa Valley Casino off Highway 29 in American Canyon, the quake interrupted a hand of Texas Hold 'Em.

"I didn't know what to do," said Sunshine Hamilton, adding that her "legs were shaking" from the experience. "Everybody ran outside, so I ran outside too. No one grabbed chips or anything like that." They sat outside for about 10 minutes before returning inside to finish the hand.mLes Flynn was asleep with his son on a buddy's couch in Napa when the quake hit.

"I had my little boy on the couch so I threw myself over him because the there was s- falling on the couch," Flynn said. "It was crazy, everything was shaking off the walls. The whole house was just rolling."