LOS ANGELES — As wildfires raging in the mountains cast an orange glow behind the downtown Los Angeles skyline, Southern California residents were jolted awake Thursday by another reminder of the power of Mother Nature.

It was an all too familiar feeling for locals as a magnitude 4.7 earthquake rocked the Los Angeles area, hurling boulders onto a Malibu street, shaking Santa Monica’s 1909 wooden walkway and knocking some people out of bed. No injuries or damage were immediately reported.

The earthquake occurred as the region east of Los Angeles was battling three major wildfires that had burned dozens of homes and forced thousands to evacuate. The fires broke out during an extreme heat wave that has just subsided.

“It’s a normal earthquake in Southern California,” said seismologist Lucy Jones of the California Institute of Technology.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake’s epicenter was 4 miles north of Malibu and about 7 miles below the Earth’s surface. The shaking was felt as far away as 45 miles in Orange County, where people reported objects moving in their homes. Several smaller aftershocks followed.

Officials in the region said authorities were searching for damage but had not found anything serious.

Malibu Councilman Bruce Silverstein said he has lived in the community for 13 years and this was the strongest quake yet, but nothing was broken.

“Our house shook for about two or three seconds. I was afraid the windows were going to break,” Silverstein said.

A camera on the 115-year-old Santa Monica Pier, about 12 miles from Malibu, captured several seconds of violent shaking during the quake. Several morning news programs also showed the earthquake live, while cameras shook in television studios.

A crew was clearing away large boulders that had rolled onto Malibu Canyon Road near the epicenter, KTLA-TV reported.

The earthquake struck closest to the Malibu Fault, but also near the Anacapa Fault, Jones said. Earthquakes below magnitude 5.0 are too weak to be definitively attributed to large faults mapped at the Earth’s surface.

Rene Vasquez, manager of The Country Kitchen breakfast restaurant in Malibu, said the quake lasted only a few seconds and kitchen staff went outside as a precaution.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Vasquez said. “Thank God nothing fell down.”

At a Starbucks on the Malibu coast, surfer Albert Daniel drank coffee and wondered if the glass ceiling would collapse on him. Then he hoped for big waves.

“It’s actually pretty quiet,” said Daniel. “We got a lot of sets, but they were very small.”

Trudy Novicki, visiting from San Clemente, was meditating on the balcony of her hotel room when she felt the quake.

“I thought a truck hit the building,” she said. Her daughter, visiting from Florida, said it was her first earthquake and thought it was a train.

People, including several celebrities, posted on social media that they woke up with a jolt.

Hotel heiress and media personality Paris Hilton wrote on X: “This #earthquake was scary.” Reality TV star Khloe Kardashian posted: “Damn that was a big quake.”

Some residents said they were warned by the state’s earthquake early warning system.

Several quakes have been felt in the area in recent months, including a magnitude 4.4 earthquake in August that sent tremors from Los Angeles to San Diego, shaking buildings, knocking items off shelves and setting off car alarms. The quake burst a pipe in the ornate 1927 Pasadena City Hall building.

In February, a magnitude 4.6 earthquake was felt in Malibu, which occurred south of Thursday’s earthquake.

Thursday’s event was the 14th series of magnitude 4.0 earthquakes in Southern California this year. While that is above the average of eight to 10 earthquakes per year in recent decades, it is too early to say whether the increased activity is statistically significant, said Caltech seismologist Jones. The previous record was 13 earthquakes of that magnitude in 1988.

The recent series of earthquakes does not indicate whether a larger, more destructive quake is imminent, but residents should be prepared for more aftershocks. The chance of another earthquake measuring 4.7 or higher is 1 in 20, geophysicist Morgan Page of the U.S. Geological Survey told the Los Angeles Times.

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Taxin reported from Orange County. Associated Press writer Olga R. Rodriguez in San Francisco also contributed to the report.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications.