guests as a precaution, and many gamblers in Las Vegas left their high-rise hotel rooms for the groundlevel casinos."The whole place was shaking like crazy," said Michelle Flabian, who was awakened on the 18th floor of the Mirage Hotel, 150 miles from the Hector area.
The effects of the earthquake were more pronounced near the epicenter.
"Did you ever play a pinball machine and see the ball get stuck in there and go bam-bam-barn-bambam-bam? It just threw my body back and forth as I ran down the hallway,- surf guitarist Dick Dale said from his home 30 miles from the epicenter.
But although the Joshua Tree Inn lost power, it had no significant damage, night manager Jacob Naylor said.
"Twelve guests, all definitely awake. A couple in from Holland, definitely shocked. A couple in from the U.K. asked me, 'Is this normal?'" Naylor said.
Seismologists say there is no connection among the large quakes that have occurred recently around the world.
Last month, a magnitude-7.2 rocked Taiwan, killing more than 2,300 people and causing an estimated $9.2 billion in damage. In August, a 7.4 quake killed at least -17,000 people in western Turkey, and in September, a 5.9 quake in Greece killed 143 people.
Arizona Daily Star reporter Thomas Stauffer contributed to this story.