Magnitude 5.2 earthquake northeast of San Diego shakes most of Southern California

Gary Robbins, Teri Figueroa and Karen Kucher, The San Diego Union-Tribune on Apr 14, 2025

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SAN DIEGO — A magnitude- 5.2 earthquake near Julian rattled much of Southern California just after 10 a.m. Monday, prompting brief evacuations in downtown San Diego and shaking cities as far away as Oxnard and Palm Springs.

The temblor, with an epicenter 3 miles south of Julian, caused especially hard shaking there and in Ramona, San Diego Country Estates, Pine Valley and Cuyamaca Rancho State Park, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

By 11:30 a.m., it had produced four aftershocks in the 3.0 to 3.9 range. Sequences of this kind rarely lead to much larger quakes.

There were no immediate reports of widespread damage, but the California Highway Patrol received several reports of rockslides around the region.

Callers told dispatchers that boulders had fallen and were blocking some lanes on state Route 76 near East Grade Road near Lake Henshaw, and that there had been a rockslide on La Cresta Road near Flume Road in the Granite Hills area, just east of El Cajon.

CHP also had a report of a dirt or rockslide on Palomar Mountain near the entrance to the state park and sent officers to check it out.

Cal Fire Capt. Mike Cornette said crews had been out assessing the area for downed lines, fallen rocks and such, but found no major damage. Cornette was in Descanso — not far south of the epicenter — when he felt “the craziest earthquake I have ever been in.”

“Seemed like it was 10 seconds. It was quite a jolt, then kept rolling,” he said.

The North County Transit District adjusted service in response to the quake, operating Sprinter trains on a reduced schedule and Coaster service on a speed restriction, with a bus bridge between Solana Beach and Sorrento Valley.

The temblor started 8.3 miles deep, immediately south of the Elsinore fault zone — one of the busiest seismic zones in California, according to the USGS.

The 190-mile long strike-slip fault extends from near the U.S.-Mexico border through San Diego County to the northern end of the Santa Ana mountains near Los Angeles, and it is capable of producing a quake as powerful as 7.5.

Many people who subscribe to ShakeAlert, a USGS early warning system, received notices of the quake on their phones and watches Monday a second or two before they felt it.

In Santa Ysabel, the shaking tossed around merchandise at the Barn Vintage Marketplace.

Owner Brandi Smothers was in the kitchen at her nearby home when her antique pottery “came flying off the shelves.” She headed to her shop and found old antique mirrors “down off the shelves and broken.”

The second floor was a little harder hit. “Anything that could fall is on the ground,” she said — but still, she added, “I’m thinking we probably got away OK.”

At the nearby Julian Pie Shop, office manager Robin Young was talking with a customer when the earthquake hit.

“It was pretty powerful. It was intense,” Young said. But “it didn’t last long enough to get a chance to react. Everyone froze.”

Even hikers who had just begun their months-long journey on the Pacific Crest Trail felt it in the county’s backcountry.

“Felt two separate shakes that each lasted about a second,” one person, who said he was on the trail near Warner Springs, wrote on Reddit. “Was pretty wild seeing the trail and all the vegetation around me shake violently like that.”

Video from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park shows a herd of African elephants respond to the movement, first running as the ground shakes, then coming together to form a tight circle around a young elephant. The group stayed tightly together for about four minutes. A Zoo spokesperson said the behavior is called an “alert circle” and said it is “intended to protect the young — and the entire herd — from threats.”

In downtown San Diego, the earthquake prompted temporary evacuations of major government buildings.

Dozens of San Diego city workers stood outside and talked on the City Hall concourse after being ordered to evacuate the 13-story City Administration Building, opened in 1965. City officials later announced the building would be closed for the remainder of the day for inspections. However, there were no immediate reports of building damage, and the assessments were being done “out of an abundance of caution.”

Nearby, the grand 1938 building that houses county administrative offices was also briefly evacuated, but by 11:30 a.m. it was back to business as usual. The quake also produced shaking felt on the 14th floor of the federal courthouse.

The San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park briefly closed to perform a damage and safety check. It has since reopened.

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(Staff writers Kelly Davis, David Garrick, Alex Riggins and Jemma Stephenson contributed to this report.)

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