A magnitude 4.6 earthquake struck near Malibu on Friday and was felt across a wide swath of Southern California.
The temblor was reported at 1:47 p.m., with an epicenter about 2½ miles northeast of Leo Carrillo State Beach and about 3 miles northwest of El Matador State Beach. It was followed by several aftershocks. An earlier estimate listed a magnitude of 4.7.
There were no immediate reports of major damage. One caller in Malibu told KNX-AM there was shaking strong enough to toss items off a counter and a wall to crack.
Dakota Rose Koep was driving when the earthquake struck. She said she didn’t feel it at the time, but when she arrived at her Simi Valley home a short time later, her grandfather said, “It was super-weird because he could feel it, but the chain on the door wasn’t moving like it usually would.” He described it as “a very stereotypical rolling sensation, kind of shaky,” she said.
Meanwhile, Koep’s dog, a Great Dane-greyhound-lab mix named Nasa, “was freaked out.” But nothing seemed to have been damaged or fallen off the walls or shelves, the 25-year-old actor and writer said.
“Some of the photos on the wall in our house were kind of slanted, but nothing really shifted here,” she said.
The earthquake produced light to weak shaking across wide swaths of Los Angeles, Ventura and Orange counties. For most people, the shaking level was just powerful enough to rattle dishes and windows, according to the U.S. Geological Survey; for others, it might’ve swung hanging objects.
In a Van Nuys courtroom, the floor began to roll as defense attorney Tony Buzbee questioned a witness in the murder trial of Rebecca Grossman. The swaying left Buzbee speechless. The lawyer, a Texan who served in the U.S. Marines in California, told the court he was an “earthquake virgin.”
Some residents said they received a few seconds of warning from the USGS earthquake early warning system. One resident of Koreatown got three or four seconds of warning on his cellphone before he felt shaking.
The temblor in Malibu prompted customers at Colony House Liquor and other nearby businesses along Pacific Coast Highway to run outside into the parking lot, said Max Alperstein, manager of the liquor store.
“That one gave a nice shake, going back and forth,” Alperstein said Friday. “It was quite a bit of shaking.
“Inside none of the bottles fell over or anything like that. Nothing broke, thankfully,” he added.
Alperstein said he has felt other quakes while working at Colony House Liquor, located down the street from Nobu. “Nothing quite as strong as that one.”
“It wasn’t a rolling, more of a good shaking, back and forth, left to right — a swaying,” Alperstein said.
Friday is the 53rd anniversary of the magnitude 6.6 earthquake that struck Sylmar in 1971.
There have been four earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 and greater in Southern California this year.
The first came on New Year’s Day when a magnitude 4.1 struck off the coast of Los Angeles County, about 10 miles southwest of San Pedro and 11 miles southeast of Rancho Palos Verdes.
A magnitude 4.2 earthquake on Jan. 5 struck a mile northwest of the remote community of Lytle Creek in the San Gabriel Mountains of San Bernardino County. Then on Jan. 24, a magnitude 4.2 earthquake hit in San Bernardino.
In Malibu Village Books, a bookstore near Malibu Lagoon State Beach, customers and staff hesitated as the floor shook.
“We definitely did feel it here,” said Emma Carroll, a bookseller at the shop. “But we are all OK.”
She said a few loose books fell off the shelves, but “nothing too bad.”
The earthquake was about 2 miles north of a section of the Malibu Coast fault zone, which runs along Pacific Coast Highway for a significant stretch of Malibu.
The quake was not related to a magnitude 5.7 earthquake that hit the southern edge of Hawaii’s Big Island a couple of hours earlier Friday.
A small tremor that was barely perceptible rumbled around 1:45 p.m. at In the Cut, a Black barbershop in Inglewood where Church Deon, 46, and two other barbers were cutting hair.
“It was like a slight rocking on a little rowboat,” he said. “So slight we was like, ‘Wait, was that an earthquake?’ ”
In Deon’s 13 years at the barbershop, he’s experienced “plenty of quakes,” he said, most of which have been the same small tremors.
“Unless the chandeliers were shaking and things were moving, we would get concerned,” he said. “But we went right back to work after a couple seconds.”
Times staff writers Julia Turner, Richard Winton, Connor Sheets and Joseph Serna contributed to this report.