Thursday’s 7.0 earthquake only shook the North Coast for a short time, but it caused tens of thousands of dollars of damage to businesses and homes in the region.

John Kreitzer, who owns the Golden Gait Mercantile in Ferndale, estimated that in less than 10 seconds the quake did as much as $50,000 damage in his store ― shaking bottles, boxes and jars of jams and jellies crashing to the floor.

“It’s pretty bad. Every aisle is full of jams and jellies and soaps and soup mixes. It’s a mess. It’sa big mess,” Kreitzer said.

No one was injured at the store, and Ferndale City Manager Jay Parrish said the city’s response team went through the town to assess the damage following the 10:45 a.m. quake but did not find any serious problems and no one was seriously hurt.

The quake hit off the coast, west of Ferndale and south of Eureka, according to the Southern California Earthquake Data Center at the California Institute of Technology.

The area continued to be hit throughout the day with aftershocks, with some of them more than 4.0 in magnitude.

Deborah Silva, director of the Ferndale Museum, said she was getting into her truck and had just set her coffee cup in the cup holder when the earthquake struck.

“And I had the ranch truck today, so it’s a big time rig, and it was rocking back and forth, and it was literally coming off the ground. The wheels were coming off the ground. It actually knocked me over because it was rocking so much,” Silva said.

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As the quake continued, the ground outside around her began to roll.

“You have no idea. It was as if you took a jump rope and you made it really long, and you grabbed it at one end and somebody else was holding the other end, and they did the up and down movement, you know, like they used to call it ‘the snake,’ or something like that, and you did it really slow, in slow motion, that’s what it would look like,” she said.

The temblor could be felt far from Ferndale, as far away as Redding and even San Francisco. The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office also issued a tsunami alert following the earthquake.

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But there were no reports of waves crashing into the Pacific Coast shoreline. Parrish said Ferndale was lucky to endure the quake with no major damage.

“What is really amazing is in our little quaint town, usually windows break on Main Street, big windows. But that didn’t happen,” Parrish said.

Angie Chavez, who works at the Patron Kitchen in Rio Dell 15 miles to the southeast, said the quake shook the restaurant hard enough to put cracks in the walls and force insulation to fall out of the ceiling. The power was also knocked out from the temblor, she said.

She said the ground shook and moved a refrigerator and bottles fell to the ground. One of her coworkers had never been through an earthquake before and had to be helped out of the building, Chavez said.

“And so we’re having to step over this broken glass to quickly get out. Yeah, so it was a little bit frightening definitely,” she said.

The North Coast region has been hit with significant quakes before over the past couple years. a 4.8 magnitude quake shook the region on Oct. 16, 2023. And a 6.2 magnitude quake also rocked the area on Dec. 20, 2021.

This quake was different, though, residents said.

“We’ve been through a couple, but I’ve always just been at home with my family. It’s the first time we’ve all just kind of been scattered. And then my coworker, she started crying pretty hard. It was pretty frightening for her. She had never been through one before,” Chavez said.

Kreitzer said the quake had two different motions.

“It just felt like the whole building just jumps up and then settles back down. I just call it a jumper. But then you have the shakers. And this one, this one really started shaking after, I think it first jumped and then rattled,” he said.

Reporter Damon Arthur welcomes story tips at 530-338-8834, by email at [email protected] and on Twitter at @damonarthur_RS. Help local journalism thrive by subscribing today!