RIO DELL, Calif. — Outside the Dollar General, the store manager ticked off the items she had to share with families trying to jumpstart their lives after an earthquake jolted them from their beds and cut off the town’s water and power.
“Batteries or candles?” a worker asked a woman toting a toddler on her hip, and handed the child a plastic candy cane filled with sweets.
Just days before Christmas in Rio Dell, the former lumber town grappled with the aftermath of early Tuesday’s magnitude 6.4 earthquake that injured at least 17 people, shook homes off foundations, damaged water systems and left tens of thousands without electricity, some for more than a day.
By Wednesday afternoon, power was restored to the homes of tens of thousands of residents, and Christmas lights wrapped around trees on the community’s main street came back on. Still, about 2,500 people remained without electricity and most of the town’s 3,500 residents lacked safe drinking water, according to Pacific Gas &Electric and local officials.
Twenty-six homes were deemed unsafe, leaving an estimated 65 people displaced, most of whom were expected to be staying with family and friends, said Rio Dell City Manager Kyle Knopp. Another 37 homes were damaged, and even those that suffered no physical cracks required intense cleanup inside, where the floors are cluttered by knocked down shelves and broken dishware.
Along this stretch of Northern California’s coast, earthquakes are common, and people talk about them much like the weather. But the one that shook people from their homes was different to many who found themselves tossed violently from their beds and stumbling around in the dark of night in search of safety.
When his house began to shake, Chad Sovereign ran into his 10-year-old son Jaxon’s room, grabbed him, and dove under a door frame. The brick chimney collapsed, pulling the wall with it and leaving a gaping hole in their home.
“It felt like the end of the world,” Sovereign said. “I was telling him I love him. I didn’t say goodbye to him, (but) in my head I was. I was just telling him, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you,’ over and over.”