Earthquake rattles Southern California as Tropical Storm Hilary hits


A 5.1-magnitude earthquake hit the Ojai, California, area on Sunday afternoon, as Tropical Storm Hilary was making its way up into Southern California.
"We are in the middle of the first tropical storm since 1939, and we just had an earthquake," Ventura County Fire Director of Communications Scott Thomsen told the Los Angeles Times. There are no reports of any serious damage or injuries in Ojai, a city northwest of Los Angeles and east of Santa Barbara. Some small businesses said they had products crash to the ground and break; at the Ojai Beverage Company, a few bottles of wine and a $900 bottle of tequila fell and shattered, manager Nick Howard told the Times.
The temblor occurred along the Sisar fault system, and was not connected to the tropical storm, scientists said. Hilary made landfall in Baja California on Sunday morning, and forecasters are warning that it could bring "catastrophic and life-threatening" flooding to Southern California.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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