A 4.4-magnitude earthquake was strongly felt Monday afternoon from the Los Angeles area all the way to San Diego, swaying buildings, rattling dishes and setting off car alarms, but no major damage or injuries were immediately reported.
The temblor caused a pipe to burst at the ornate 1927 Pasadena City Hall building, where TV news helicopters showed water spilling from an upper floor.
Elsewhere in the Los Angeles area, an ESPN interview was interrupted, and the ground swayed in Anaheim, where Disneyland is located in Orange County.
The quake was centered near the Los Angeles neighborhood of Highland Park, about 10.5 kilometers northeast of LA's City Hall, and about 12.1km below the surface, the US Geological Survey said.
The quake was felt from greater Los Angeles south to San Diego and east to the Palm Springs desert region, according to the USGS community reporting page. A small number of reports were filed from the southern San Joaquin Valley, about 160km northwest of LA.
Pasadena public information officer Lisa Derderian confirmed that the water leak at City Hall was caused by the quake. About 200 employees safely evacuated from City Hall, and one person was rescued from an elevator, she said.
There was no obvious damage to Pasadena's century-old Rose Bowl.
Los Angeles firefighters from all 106 stations surveyed the 1,217-square-km city and found no significant damage, spokesperson Margaret Stewart said.
The quake served more as a reminder of what could happen in a state where a huge population lives above active fault lines.
The quake struck on the first day of the new school year for 540,000 students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Many schools felt the quake.
The quake comes less than a week after a 5.2-magnitude temblor hit southern California.
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