Officials with the city of Pasadena, which is close to the earthquake’s epicenter, said the shaking caused a water pipe to burst inside City Hall, forcing employees to temporarily evacuate the building. But otherwise, no major damage was identified.
Still, the effects were felt much farther away, including in Hollywood, around 9 miles west of South Pasadena, where the quake caused a rattling sound in buildings and a sensation of rocking back and forth.
Lucy Jones, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, said the quake most likely occurred on a shallow fault similar to the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake. That magnitude-5.9 temblor struck 12 miles east of Los Angeles, killing eight people and causing substantial property damage.
It’s not yet known precisely which fault ruptured Monday. Jones said on X that the area features “several faults that stack on top of each other, none of which come to the surface.”
The National Weather Service said no tsunami was expected.