Los Angeles • The largest Southern California quake in nearly 20 years jolted an area stretching from Sacramento to Las Vegas to Mexico as it cracked buildings, set fires, wrecked roads but only caused minor injuries.
Seismologists warned that large aftershocks were expected to continue for days, if not weeks.
The 7.1-magnitude quake struck at 8:19 p.m. Friday and was centered 11 miles from Ridgecrest, the same area of the Mojave Desert where a 6.4-magnitude temblor hit just a day earlier.
Ridgecrest, already trying to recover from Thursday's earthquake, took the brunt of the damage.