Sept. 29, 2004
Associated Press

ARVIN, Calif. - A moderate quake rattled Kern County on Wednesday, just hours after a pair of apparently unrelated aftershocks jolted another part of Central California. The latest temblor apparently triggered a landslide on a state highway.

The magnitude-5.0 temblor struck at 3:54 p.m., 17 miles northeast of Arvin, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake, which was felt as far south as Los Angeles, was centered about 150 miles southeast of Parkfield in Monterey County, where a magnitude-6.0 quake scared residents on Tuesday.

"It's not an aftershock, it's a whole new earthquake," said Jill Perry, director of media relations at California Institute of Technology.

There have been over 500 aftershocks to the Parkfield quake. Two of the biggest, 5.0 and 4.5, shook the region around 10 a.m. Wednesday.

Perry expressed surprise that two substantial quakes would occur so close in time and location but apparently on different faults.

The rock slide closed at least one lane of state Highway 178 in a canyon 20 miles west of Lake Isabella, California Highway Patrol Officer Nathan Hunt said. A couple of vehicles were involved, but Hunt could not provide further details. A passenger in one of the vehicles requested an ambulance, he said.

Arvin, a rural community of 14,000 is 79 miles north of Los Angeles and lies at the eastern end of the White Wolf fault, which ruptured in a magnitude-7.5 quake in 1952.

"There was a roll for a couple of seconds, but it wasn't a strong jerk," said Lupe Vasquez, a dispatcher for the Arvin Police Department.

Bakersfield police spokeswoman Mary DeGeare said dispatchers received about a dozen calls from people reporting the earthquake.

"It was obvious it was an earthquake. It was more of a jolt than the rolling sensation they felt yesterday," she said.

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