CHANNEL ISLANDS, Ca. – A magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck near the Channel Islands early Thursday afternoon, jolting residents – including a male bald eagle watching over his young.
A Channel Island National Park live nest cam captured the moment the bird felt the quake, startling him enough to briefly fly out of view of the camera before returning to check on his eaglets.
A couple of bricks fell off a chimney structure on a Nature Conservancy property on Santa Cruz Island, one of the eight Channel Islands, but beyond that there were no injuries on any of the islands, said Yvonne Menard, a park spokeswoman. No evacuations were ordered.
The earthquake rattled homes in the Los Angeles area and beyond as Southern California saw its largest quake in more than four years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The temblor hit beneath the Pacific Ocean about 12:29 p.m., at a depth of about 10 miles beneath the surface, USGS reported. It was centered about 41 miles southwest of Ventura and 85 miles west of Los Angeles.
It was produced by offshore faults that “are part of the system that moves Southern California around a bend of the San Andreas fault,” seismologist Lucy Jones tweeted.
Jones, formerly of the USGS, described it as an earthquake of “moderate” size.
There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage, according to law enforcement and fire agencies across Southern California.
