(Reuters) -A magnitude 7 earthquake hit off the northern California coast on Thursday, prompting a tsunami warning for a large stretch of the California and Oregon coasts, officials said.
The tsunami was forecast to hit the California coast at 12:10 p.m. Pacific Time.
Some 4.7 million residents of California and Oregon were under the tsunami warning, the National Weather Service said.
The quake, which hit at a shallow depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), was centered about 39 miles (63 km) west of the town of Ferndale, a sparsely populated portion of the northern California coast, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
The National Tsunami Center issued a warning for a long stretch of the U.S. West Coast, from Dunes City, Oregon, south to San Francisco and San Jose, California, 400 miles (643 km) away.
San Francisco and a large area of the surrounding Bay Area were under the tsunami warning.
The City of Berkeley police department issued an evacuation order for parts of the city on the San Francisco Bay “due to a Tsunami coming to West Berkeley,” according to an alert sent to residents.
About 19,000 clients were without power in Humboldt County – up from near zero before the earthquake struck, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on social media that the governor “is now meeting with state emergency officials and working to ensure Californians are safe.”
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado, Rajveer Singh Pardesi and Urvi Dugar in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese and Sandra Maler)
Comments