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5.4 Quake Hits California, Minor Injuries Reported

  LIVE: KCBS Coverage Of L.A. Earthquake

LOS ANGELES (CBS) A strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, causing buildings to sway and triggering some precautionary evacuations. No immediate damage was reported.

The jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas.

The 11:42 a.m. quake was initially estimated at 5.8 by the U.S. Geological Survey but was revised downward to 5.4. A few dozen aftershocks quickly followed, the largest estimated at magnitude-3.8.

The quake was centered 29 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles near the San Bernardino County city of Chino Hills, and was estimated to be about 8 miles below the earth's surface.

"It will certainly cause cracked plaster and broken windows, but probably not structural damage," USGS seismologist Kate Hutton said.

The magnitude-5.9 Whittier Narrows quake in 1987 was the last big shake in that area. That quake heavily damaged older buildings and houses in communities east of Los Angeles.

The Governor's Office of Emergency Services had received no damage or injury reports, said spokesman Kelly Huston in Sacramento.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles. San Bernardino County fire dispatch also had no immediate reports of damage.

The quake struck at 11:42 a.m. PDT. Buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles for several seconds.

Workers quickly evacuated some office buildings.

"It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while," said Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore, who was in the sheriff's suburban Monterey Park headquarters east of Los Angeles.

At least 10 aftershocks were recorded according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The largest aftershock was of 3.8 magnitude.

The quake was felt at the Dallas Cowboys training camp in Oxnard, Calif.
Dandy Killeen, executive sports producer for CBS station KTVT-TV in Dallas, is with the Cowboys and said in an e-mail it felt like a "rolling" sensation."

"The best way to describe the 'rolling' sensation is that it was like experiencing a dizzy spell that lasted about a minute," Killeen said.

In Orange County, about 2000 detectives were attending a conference on gangs at a Marriott hotel in Anaheim when a violent jolt shook the main conference room.

Mike Willever, who was at the hotel, said, "First we heard the ceiling shaking, then the chandelier started to shake, then there was a sudden movement of the floor."

Chris Watkins, from San Diego, said he previously felt several earthquakes, but "that was one of the worst ones."

Delegates and guests at a cluster of hotels near the Disneyland resort spilled into the streets immediately after the quake.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake under Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley was magnitude 6.7. It killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage in the metropolitan area.

The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A 7.1 quake -- much stronger than Northridge -- hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused only a few injuries and no deaths.

California is one of the world's most seismically active regions. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth's major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.

Acting mayor Wendy Greuel says minor structural damage has been reported throughout Los Angeles, along with five minor injuries and people stuck in elevators.

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