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Reports From On The Scene Of California's Latest Earthquake

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

The community of Ridgecrest, Calif., is getting a clearer view of the damage caused by last night's 7.1 magnitude earthquake. There are reports of power outages, fires and some injuries in the area about 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles. Sharon McNary of member station KPCC is in Ridgecrest and joins us now. Good morning.

SHARON MCNARY, BYLINE: Good morning.

MONTAGNE: And you just arrived a few hours ago. Tell us what you're seeing.

MCNARY: You know, I've been driving through town. I've been seeing lots and lots of chairs in front of houses, even some tents with mattresses inside them that people drug out of the house to give us a sense of greater safety. You don't see a lot of external damage to houses just from what I've seen driving around. But at the fire station, of course, all the fire engines and vehicles have been pulled out of the fire station. And it was a good thing because there's still a lot of aftershocks. I was sitting in my car during a sizable one.

And when I first rolled into Ridgecrest, I stopped at a gas station, and the pumps were almost all occupied with people filling up their gas tanks, possibly for a long drive to another place to stay or just to keep their vehicles filled up while they run around doing post-emergency chores, which, you know, there's going to be a lot of them. But inside a convenience store at a gas station, the typical thing you see - bottles everywhere. You could smell the wine just wafting out the front door. And the earthquake actually knocked a toilet off its bolts. So that was unusable for customers.

MONTAGNE: Well, you know, people in Ridgecrest and all the surrounding area must be on edge because of that 6.4 magnitude earthquake on the Fourth of July. But how is this stronger quake affecting the people you've been talking to? This is a one-two punch for them.

MCNARY: Well, it's almost like a two-one punch because the bigger one followed what they thought was the big one.

MONTAGNE: Right, right.

MCNARY: I spoke to one woman named Shawny French (ph). She and her daughter slept outside in their front lawn in a tent overnight. They'd lost power for a couple of hours after the July Fourth earthquake. And that was a 6.4. But last night, the 7.1, their power went off briefly, and then it came back quickly. It also restored her Internet, which was actually the only good news she's had. I asked her what she needed, and here's what she said.

SHAWNY FRENCH: I need it to stop. I need it to stop. I'm too old for this.

MONTAGNE: Whoa. Yeah. Having been in earthquakes, you do want it to stop after about a bunch of post-earthquakes, little tremors. So what there about emergency services? What's been set up so far?

MCNARY: Well, in a situation like a 7.1 earthquake, we'll see assistance coming from all over the state, maybe even beyond. There are specialized units, like the urban search and rescue team. I went inside the trailer that the Los Angeles Fire Department brought out, and they have tools for freeing people from cars, from buildings. They can cut through steel with an oxygen torch or through concrete with heavy saws. So far, though, none of that has been needed. The housing stock here dates from World War II and after, so it's got pretty good building standards. So it's - this city's been less vulnerable to earthquake damage than what you might find in an older city.

MONTAGNE: That's Sharon McNary of KPCC talking to us from Ridgecrest, Calif., which is near the epicenter of last night's big quake. Thanks very much.

MCNARY: You bet. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Renee Montagne is co-host of NPR's Morning Edition, the most widely heard radio news program in the U.S. She has hosted the newsmagazine since 2004, broadcasting from NPR West in Culver City, California, with co-host Steve Inskeep in NPR's Washington, D.C. headquarters. Montagne is a familiar voice on NPR, having reported and hosted since the mid-1980s. She hosted All Things Considered with Robert Siegel for two years in the late 1980s, and previously worked for NPR's Science, National and Foreign desks. Montagne traveled to Greenwich, England, in May 2007 to kick off the yearlong series, "Climate Connections," in which NPR partnered with National Geographic to chronicle how people are changing the Earth's climate and how the climate is impacting people. From the prime meridian, she laid out the journey that would take listeners to Africa, New Orleans and the Antarctic. Since 9/11, Montagne has gone to Afghanistan nine times, travelling throughout the country to speak to Afghans about their lives. She's interviewed farmers and mullahs, poll workers and President Karzai, infamous warlords turned politicians and women fighting for their rights. She has produced several series, beginning in 2002 with 'Recreating Afghanistan" and most recently, in 2013, asking a new generation of Afghans — born into the long war set off by the Soviet invasion — how they see their country's future. In the spring of 2005, Montagne took Morning Edition to Rome for the funeral of Pope John Paul ll. She co-anchored from Vatican City during a historic week when millions of pilgrims and virtually every world leader descended on the Vatican. In 1990, Montagne traveled to South Africa to cover Nelson Mandela's release from prison, and continued to report from South Africa for three years. In 1994, she and a team of NPR reporters won a prestigious Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of South Africa's historic presidential and parliamentary elections. Through most of the 1980s, Montagne was based in New York, working as an independent producer and reporter for both NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Prior to that, she worked as a reporter/editor for Pacific News Service in San Francisco. She began her career as news director of the city's community radio station, KPOO, while still at university. In addition to the duPont Columbia Award, Montagne has been honored by the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of Afghanistan, and by the National Association of Black Journalists for a series on Black musicians going to war in the 20th century. Montagne graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, as a Phi Beta Kappa. Her career includes serving as a fellow at the University of Southern California with the National Arts Journalism Program, and teaching broadcast writing at New York University's Graduate Department of Journalism.
Renee Montagne
Renee Montagne, one of the best-known names in public radio, is a special correspondent and host for NPR News.