Earthquake rattles Bay Area and Central Coast

UPDATED 1/4/2018 6:00 p.m.

People on the Central Coast are still talking after a Bay Area earthquake rattle parts of our area.

The earthquake woke people up early Thursday morning.

Experts say the 4.4 earthquake centered along the Hayward Fault near the U.C. Berkeley campus.

Dozens from the Santa Cruz area commented on KION’s Facebook page saying they felt the quake.

Central Coast earthquake experts say it’s no surprise that the earthquake in the Bay Area could be felt as far away as Santa Cruz.

“It’s a 4.4 and of course this is a logarithmic scale so even going from a magnitude four up to 4.4 you’re having about three times stronger ground shaking,” UC Santa Cruz Seismology professor Thorne Lay said.

The earthquake centered on the Hayward Fault, one the USGS said has already caused devastation.

“It wouldn’t be a big surprise if we had a big earthquake on the Hayward fault, the last big earthquake occurred in 1868,” said Keith Knudsen with the U.S. Geological Survey,” “We’re about at the hundred and 150 year anniversary for the last big earthquake of the Hayward fault and so we know from geologic excavations that big earthquakes happen on the fault happen about every hundred and fifty years.”

In the meantime, Central Coast experts say they’re working to study this most recent earthquake, hoping to learn anything they can.

“We’ll be looking at this event and evaluating to the extent that we can whether or not it’s a fore shock,” said Professor Lay.

One of the main things seismologists will be keeping an eye on are the aftershocks. They say the way those decay can help them get a better idea of what the Hayward Fault could bring in the future.

UPDATED AT 7:30: An earthquake, initially reported as magnitude 4.5, struck the San Francisco Bay Area early Thursday morning. It was later reclassified as a magnitude 4.4 quake.

According to the United States Geological Survey, the quake hit 2 miles east southeast of Berkeley, California around 2:39 a.m. Thursday . It had a depth of about 7.5 miles.

In addition to being felt throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, reports have come in from as far south as Santa Cruz. No damage or injuries have been reported.