Today's Los Angeles Earthquake Sent Panic Through Live News Broadcast
Two KTLA News anchors dove under their desk this morning as a 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit Los Angeles early on Monday. Chris Schauble and Megan Henderson were at the KTLA desk when everything jolted. "Earthquake, we're having an earthquake!" Schauble yelled before diving under his desk. The anchors emerged seconds later, clearly startled, to continue their broadcast.
While it looks kind of funny on tape, the anchors were no doubt wise to get under the desk as quickly as they did. That should become obvious by the time the camera pans up to the studio ceiling, which was covered in heavy lighting equipment still swaying back and forth from the tremor as the anchors resumed their coverage. We can laugh about it now, only because we know what they didn't: It was a pretty minor tremor.
The quake, while sharply felt in the Los Angeles metro area, caused no damage worth mentioning, according to the LA Times. (The KTLA studios noticed a bit of debris from the ceiling on their desks). There were no initial reports of injuries, either. The shallow tremor hit at about 6:25 p.m. Pacific time, at a depth of 5 miles. Its epicenter is quite close to Los Angeles, just 9 km northwest of Westwood, CA:
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Source: USGS
The USGS initially reported a magnitude of 4.7 for the Los Angeles quake. It was later downgraded to 4.4. As the Washington Post explained, tremors under a 5.0 magnitude are relatively common.
Update: Chris Schauble seems to have taken his internet fame in stride. His new Twitter avatar is a photo of himself, terrified behind the anchor desk:
This article was originally published at http://www.thewire.com/national/2014/03/todays-los-angeles-earthquake-sent-panic-through-live-news-broadcast/359241/
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