UPDATED with latest : A good-sized earthquake rattled windows across Los Angeles at about 1:47 p.m. today. Preliminary reports put the temblor at 4.6 on the Richter Scale and have it centered about 7.7 miles southwest of Westlake Village. The USGS said the quake occurred at a depth of about 10 miles. It was the largest such shake felt in that area in some time.
There was no immediate word of damage or injuries, but the area received about seven inches of rain in the past week, so local landslides may come to light in the coming hours.
Dr. Lucy Jones of the USGS said the shock happened “very close to the Malibu Coast Fault” in “an an area that has had plenty of earthquakes in the past and is well understood to be seismically active.” Another USGS official later said the quake may have been located on the nearby Anacapa-Dume Fault.
Malibu Coast Fault line comes out at the coast and then dips down beneath the mountains. Officials said there “have been five events of magnitude 4 or greater recorded in the local area.” They include the largest, a 5.3, in 1973, a 5.2 in 1979 and another in 1989. The most recent was a 4.4 in 2009.