Magnitude 4.1 earthquake triggers emergency alert in Northern California

Quake hit outside of Sacramento

A magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck Northern California on Wednesday morning, prompting residents across the region to get emergency alerts on their phones.

The 4.1 quake was recorded at 9.29 am local time at a depth of 10.8 km, about 4 km south-southwest of Isleton, a small town outside of the capital Sacramento, according to the US Geological Survey.

“Earthquake Detected!” the USGS ShakeAlert about the event read. “Drop, Cover, Hold On. Protect Yourself.”

Jack Doelscher, who was at Java Jack’s Cafe in Isleton when the shaking began, said he felt the immediate impacts.

“Oh, it was a good rocking,” he told The San Francisco Standard. “But we survived.”

Some residents of San Francisco said they felt shaking from the quake in the Russian Hill neighbourhood.

No immediate impacts were felt on the west side of the city, where this reporter is based.

Others in the Bay Area reported not feeling a thing.

The earthquake came a day before California is set to conduct a statewide test of its earthquake readiness called the Great California ShakeOut, during a massive drill asking residents to “drop, cover, and hold on” on 19 October at 10.19am.

As part of the ShakeOut, an estimated 2.8m users of the state’s MyShake app will receive a test earthquake alert with warnings in English and Spanish for a fictitious 5.0 earthquake centred around San Francisco.

And in another uncanny coincidence, the earthquake in Northern California came just a day after the 34th anniversary of the infamous Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area, which killed 63 people and injured an estimated 3,700.

The massive 6.9 magnitude earthquake in the Santa Cruz mountains flattened road infrastructure and tore out parts of the Bay Bridge, causing an estimated $10bn in damages.