(TNS) — Glenn Pomeroy, head of the California Earthquake Authority, spent the weekend in Ridgecrest, near the epicenter of Friday’s 7.1-magnitude quake and its day-earlier, 6.4-magnitude baby brother.
“Driving around, you could clearly see there had been a disaster,” he told me. “Streetlights were blinking, stores were closed, the ground was still shaking.”
But the people of Ridgecrest and nearby communities were lucky, Pomeroy said. The damage could have been a lot worse.
“You put a 7.1 under Los Angeles, you’d be looking at a whole different situation,” he said. “We could be looking at billions of dollars in damage.”
…
