A 6.0-magnitude earthquake that hit northern California Sunday, Aug. 24, destroyed many historic buildings in Napa and other parts leaving more than a 100 people injured.
The earthquake was the hardest to hit the area since 1989. It destroyed four mobile homes and left 16 buildings uninhabitable, according to an official statement released by Napa City. One commercial structure was severely damaged.
The quake started four miles northwest of the American Canyon and six miles southwest of Napa Valley. The epicenter of the quake was at the tip of the wine county, which also witnessed over 100 gas leaks and about 60 water leaks.
The quake fuelled six major fires as a result of the gas leaks. It also left more than 15,000 homes without power.
"Everything and everyone in Napa was affected by the quake. My house, along with everybody else's, is a disaster. It looks like somebody broke in and ravaged the place, room by room," said Malissa Koven, a reporter for CNN. "Anything and everything that could fall, did."
"The post office building had cracked, the local hardware store was destroyed with layers of shelves that had fallen over and busted the windows, multiple buildings had fallen apart, and all the local businesses looked trashed on the inside and out," she added.
Napa's streets were littered with shattered glass, bricks and chunks of debris. The residents described the quake as a "rolling" one rather than a sharp shaking sensation. About 172 people were admitted to the Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa of which 12 were being treated of broken bones while others had suffered heart attacks, The Associated Press reports.
The shake was felt almost 120 miles away from Napa. The damage is expected to cost the county at least a billion dollars, according to the New York Times.
Several wine stores lost a lot of their stock to the quake.
"It was everything - hundreds of bottles of broke," David Duncan, who runs the Silver Oak Winery, told the NY Times. "We spent a lot of money and love on this place. It's all gone now. It's cracking and sliding down the hill," Duncan added.
While the loss to the wine county is great ,others believe the damage could have been worse.
"This was a pretty big jolt in Napa, but it certainly is not 'The Big One'," Barry Martin, Napa's community outreach coordinator was quoted by The Guardian.
"Usually when people talk about 'The Big One,' they're talking about something on the order of a magnitude 9, which of course is tremendously more powerful" Don Blakeman, a US Geological Survey geophysicist explained to the publication.
"It's bad any way you calculate it. But it could have been a heck of a lot worse," Mike Thompson, U.S. representative of Napa told the AP.
