As the community recovers from Thursday morning’s 7.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami warning, officials are still assessing the impacts, but no injuries have yet been reported and damage seems to be fairly minimal so far.
“We feel like we got lucky this time,” Rio Dell City Manager Kyle Knopp said, reached by KHSU this morning. “Right now Rio Dell doesn’t have any reported structural damage.”
This is particularly good news for Rio Dell, which was severely impacted during the earthquake in Dec. 2022, which caused damage to roughly one in four dwellings in the town, caused 92 homes to be red tagged and many residents to be displaced.
With many structures still under construction after the ‘22 quake, Knopp said, this earthquake definitely caused a lot of fear of additional damage. Luckily, the response has been much quicker this time around and Knopp is glad that Gov. Newsom called a state of emergency when he did, allowing for more resources to be available to our rural area.
Knopp said that he does expect more reports of damage to come trickling in, but so far the only significant damage he knows of is a crack in Blue Slide Road. And though it looks pretty bad, the road is still passable, Knopp said.
In Eureka things also seem to be the best case scenario for a large quake, with also no significant damage reported. When it came to yesterday’s emergency response, Eureka City Manager Miles Slattery said that the City’s primary concern was making sure people were evacuated from the tsunami zones. Slattery said that the City coordinated with the police department to send officers to businesses located within the tsunami zone to let people know that they needed to leave the area.
Overall the response went pretty well, Slattery said, but did highlight some of the ways in which Eureka and the County could be better prepared for an emergency like this in the future.
“We need to do a lot of outreach about how we evacuate,” Slattery said, adding that too many people jumping in their cars can cause additional safety issues by clogging the roads. “We want people to evacuate by foot, if possible.”
In general, the feeling around the county seems to be of relief, with much less damage occurring than expected for a 7.0 earthquake. The most important thing to take away from this experience, Knopp and Slattery agreed, is to plan for the next disaster, when things could be much worse.
If you or your business was affected by the quake, you can report damages to the Humboldt County Office of Emergency Services by filling out this 2024 December Earthquake form.
The Redwood Coast Tsunami Workgroup has resources and guides available to learn more about earthquakes, tsunamis, and how to prepare for them.
They have recently updated their comprehensive guide, Living on Shaky Ground, which has vital information on what to do before, during, and after an earthquake.
