6.0 magnitude earthquake jolts northern California wine country

6.0 magnitude earthquake jolts northern California wine country

A 6.0 magnitude earthquake jolted the Napa Valley area of California early Sunday morning, resulting in hundreds of injuries and damage to homes and businesses.

A 6.0 magnitude earthquake, the largest to hit the San Francisco Bay Area in 25 years, sent over one hundred people to hospitals, started fires, damaged historic buildings and caused power outages affecting tens of thousands of people in the California wine country Sunday, reports Huffington Post.

Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa treated 120 individuals, including six critically injured patients, said hospital officials at an afternoon press conference.

The quake struck at 3:20 a.m. about 6 miles from the city of Napa, rupturing water mains and gas lines, and leaving two adults and a child critically injured. Bottles and casks were upended at some famed Napa Valley wineries. Residents ran out of their homes in the early morning darkness.

At dawn, dazed residents, too fearful of aftershocks to return to bed,  were wandering through historic downtown Napa. A 10-foot chunk of bricks and concrete from the corner of an old county courthouse had been shaken loose by the quake. The resulting hole was large enough to permit a view of the offices inside.

Chris Malloy, 45, described calling for her two children in the dark as the quake rumbled under their family home. The force of the quake threw heavy pieces of furniture three or four feet and broke them.

“It was shaking and I was crawling on my hands and knees in the dark, looking for them,” said Malloy, her feet bloodied from crawling through broken glass.

The home 20-year-old college student Eduardo Rivera shares with six relatives was shaking so violently that he kept getting knocked back into his bed as he tried to flee, said Rivera. “When I woke up, my mom was screaming, and the sound from the earthquake was greater than my mom’s screams,” he said.

President Barack Obama has been briefed on the earthquake, said the White House. Federal officials have communicated with state and local emergency responders. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for southern Napa County, and directed state agencies to provide equipment and personnel.

The city has already exhausted its own resources through extinguishing fires, transporting injured residents, searching homes for persons possibly trapped, and answering  gas leak and power line calls.

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