Humboldt County cleans up

<p>Eureka resident Debbie Hansen had just returned home and was relaxing when the earthquake struck.</p><p>“It was like a semi hit my house,” Hansen said of the 6.5 magnitude Saturday afternoon temblor. “It was scary. Scary.”</p><p>Around Eureka and elsewhere on the central Humboldt County coast, people like Hansen were cleaning up Sunday and, for the most part, feeling fortunate.</p><p>“I was way lucky,” said Hansen. A fallen picture frame was the only thing that broke at her home, she said. At her downtown Eureka restaurant, Amigas Burritos, the damage extended only to some cases of beverages and a few glasses.</p><p>Business also returned to normal for many. </p><p>Hansen said she was getting calls all day asking if she was open. And at the Cyber City Family Entertainment Center on Broadway, which runs north along Eureka's edge, customers showed up as usual.</p><p>“Everybody showed up for their birthday parties and we're very, very busy,” head manager Ken Boss said.</p><p>The business sustained damage that included broken glass, computers and flat-screen televisions, but there were no injuries, he said.</p><p>As similar stories of recovery and relief were told around the county, officials also warned residents that aftershocks were likely. Over the next week, there is about a 65 percent chance of a “strong and possibly damaging aftershock,” the U.S. Geological Survey said.</p><p>“We just know to expect one that could be, you know, like a 5. And a 5 can shake things up pretty good,” said Leslie Lollich, a spokeswoman for the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services.</p><p>“People should be prepared for that,” Lollich said. “Make sure that their emergency kits are stocked up and they have water, flashlights, batteries for their flashlights.</p><p>Throughout Sunday, a fuller picture began to emerge about the aftermath of the quake, which was centered about 22 miles offshore Ferndale.</p><p>About 30 people were treated for minor injuries; the most serious of which was a broken hip, Lollich said.</p><p>And 18 people were left homeless after their Eureka apartment building was ruled unsafe for occupancy. They were provided with temporary housing through the Red Cross.</p><p>Eureka — a port city of about 26,000 residents — sustained perhaps $12.5 million in damage, according to early estimates, Lollich said, “and that could go up or down.”</p><p>“Most of the damage was centered in the Humboldt Bay region,” said Lollich.</p><p>Transportation authorities said Sunday there were no accidents or significant bridge damage attributed to the quake.</p><p>In Eureka, the county seat, at least two larger commercial buildings were also declared unsafe. Both were brick structures in the city's old town section — one vacant and one named the Lloyd Building, about a block from Hansen's restaurant, that housed a gymnasium and some offices.</p><p>“We also had a couple of houses fall off their foundations,” Lollich said.</p><p>The city's Bayshore Mall will remain closed for cleanup work. “We don't know when that will reopen,” she said.</p><p>The city's main library also sustained water damage that would keep it shut until Wednesday, she said.</p><p>Power was restored by Sunday afternoon to all 36,000 customers who had been blacked out.</p><p>Police in Ferndale, a town of about 1,500 residents, said the earthquake caused stucco to fall off City Hall and shattered windows at shops, strewing the historic downtown streets with glass shards, the Associated Press reported.</p><p>“I thought a tire had blown off my truck because it was so hard to keep control of the vehicle,” Officer Lindsey Frank said. “Power lines were swaying, and I could see people in the fields trying to keep their balance.”</p><p>Ferndale was hit far worse in 1992, when a 7.1 quake thrashed the North Coast timber region, causing $50 million in damage, injuring 95 and leaving several hundred people homeless.</p><p>That experience led many residents and businesspeople to reinforce their buildings, which apparently served them well on Saturday.</p><p>“Partly because the ‘92 quake did so much damage in Ferndale, a lot of people had retrofitted their homes,” Lollich said.</p><p>At the Golden Gate Mercantile general store on Main Street, owner Marlin Mesman said he and his wife bolted all their shelves and cabinets to the walls after the 1992 quake.</p><p>“So we are picking up what came off the shelves rather than the shelves themselves,” he said. </p><p>Mesman and his wife live on the top floor of their 1893 three-story building, and the store is on the bottom floor. He said the building withstood the shaking just fine.</p><p>“It just sounded like it was coming down,” he said. “In these wonderful redwood buildings it makes a lot of noise, a lot of noise. But they rock and rock and just come through it.”</p><p>And the timing could have been far worse, he said.</p><p>“We feel very fortunate that it didn't happen when we were in the middle of Christmas,” he said. “We would have had maybe five, 10 times as much stuff on the floor. It could have ruined our business profits.”</p><p>A few blocks away, at the Gingerbread Mansion Inn, a historic bed and breakfast, armoires and china hutches crashed to the floor, leaving a trail of broken glass and china (including tea service for 22), said an owner, Susan Arriaga.</p><p>But the eight guests in the home at the time all stayed the night, she said, and then pitched in to help clean up.</p><p>“They were great,” she said.</p><p>The temblor was felt in towns more than 300 miles south into central California and as far north as central Oregon, the U.S. Geological Survey said. Ferndale is about 190 miles north of Santa Rosa.</p><p>“It scared a lot of people, is what it did,” said Rick Roberts, owner of Jitter Bean Coffee Co., which has a roastery and five coffee shops in Humboldt County.</p><p>The Associated Press contributed to this story.</p>