- CALIFORNIA from Page A IValley, it splashed water in swimming pools, shook people from their dreams and flooded' 911 operators with more than 400 calls.
It also spurred a day's worth of conversation as folks swapped stories about what they were doing when they felt the quake and what it felt like in homes from Carefree to south Phoenix. Part of being a Valley resident is getting excited about an earthquake, feeling the shocks from far away yet still confident that the walls and roof won't collapse.
Another part is pure shock at being rattled awake. Lisa Ferro was watching a movie in bed when she felt the mattress shake.
"I was creeped out. I woke my friend up and went over there," said the 38-year-old haunted-house worker from northwest Phoenix. "I' thought it was a poltergeist, a spirit or something."
"I thought I was dreaming," recalled Cur Curtis Johnson, 40, of north Phoenix, "The bed was
shaking so hard, I thought it was lifting up. . . . Then the airconditioning turned on. I thought it was a spirit."
Although every so often a quake somewhere in Southern California rattles windows and jingles chandeliers here, the likelihood of a full-blown. earthquake in Arizona is low. The state has about 20 faults, or cracks in the Earth's crust, and has the smallest earthquake potential of the Western states.
Since 1900, northern Arizona
has been rattled by three quakes of Mojave about 6.0 magnitude, a level that four can cause extensive damage. They cracked occurred near Flagstaff in 1906, 4 north of Flagstaff in 1910 and near d the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in 1912. a Still, the tentacles from Califor nia's quake put the quivers in
Valley residents and sent many
calling police. Emergency dis
patchers were flooded with 911 calls across Arizona. I
"We were inundated with 911 calls from people who thought that
there was everything from prowlers
on their roof to people swimming in their pools with water splash- a ing," said Sgt. Dave Trombi of the
Maricopa County Sheriffs Office.
"People just wanted to know what the heck happened," said Hal
Brooks, communication supervisor for Glendale. He said 58 people called police just after the quake hit.
"We didn't know what had
happened," Brooks said.
The earthquake, with its epicenter near Ludlow, derailed an Amtrak train near the town in the a