LUCKY 7.0; BIG ONE'S NEAR MISS LEAVES US SHAKEN; BUT OK : WILL THIS TRIGGER MORE QUAKES? EXPERTS DOUBT IT.

Byline: Matt Leedy and Harrison Sheppard Staff Writers

A magnitude-7.0 earthquake centered in the Mojave Desert rattled parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Mexico early Saturday morning, derailing a passenger train, knocking out power to thousands of homes and causing minor injuries, but no reported fatalities.

``It was just a rude awakening,'' said Wanda Gastelo, 37, of Northridge, where residents said they felt a long, rolling motion.

The quake, centered in the remote desert at Hector Mine, about 120 miles east of Los Angeles, began at 2:46 a.m., jolting residents awake in the San Fernando Valley, Phoenix, Tijuana and Las Vegas. The temblor knocked mobile homes off their foundations in a desert community and cracked a highway bridge.

``If this incident would have occurred in a populated area, it could be three days before some people got help,'' said Bret Raney, spokesman for the San Bernardino County Fire Department.

U.S. Geological Survey Seismologist Lucy Jones said the chance of the Hector earthquake triggering a large earthquake in the San Fernando Valley was ``almost nil.''

``It's so far away, and it was only a 7,'' Jones said. ``If it had been an 8, we could talk about it affecting the whole area. Even then, the probabilities are low. The ability to trigger another earthquake dies off with distance, and it's a long way from Hector to the San Fernando Valley.''

The earthquake did trigger more temblors along the San Andreas Fault, which geologists are watching closely, Jones said.

``The chance of this earthquake triggering something bigger is 2 percent,'' she said.

Mayor Richard Riordan expressed relief at the remoteness of the earthquake.

``Thank God it took place in a remote area where there appears to be no tremendous damage or personal injuries,'' said Mayor Richard Riordan.

No serious injuries were reported in Los Angeles County, according to the county and city fire departments.

Distance a factor

The distance of metropolitan areas from the epicenter of Saturday's quake in the Mojave Desert helped minimize damage and prevented the strong jolt from becoming a disaster like Turkey, Taiwan or Northridge.

``The ground shaking was very strong at the epicenter and along the fault rupture,'' said Kate Hutton, a seismologist at California Institute of Technology. ``If it had been in a populated area, it could have caused significant damage.''

``Some of the waves are lost as it gets farther away,'' Hutton said. ``The quake gets weaker. It becomes more of a rolling earthquake with the greater distance.''

Because aftershocks will continue for some time, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services advises Southern California residents to review their earthquake safety measures in the home, for driving a car and at the workplace. Basic safety measures are available on the Internet at www.oes.ca.gov.

Gov. Gray Davis has directed the National Guard and all state departments to make available appropriate resources potentially needed for a quick response if a large earthquake occurred.

Experts say there is no connection between the large quakes that have occurred recently around the world.

No major damage

In the San Fernando Valley, residents reported waking up to find items falling off shelves and water from pools sloshing over the sides, but no major structural damage.

``It was not as jolting as the last one,'' said Terri Darus, 38, a Granada Hills resident, referring to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. ``It was more a swaying like you were at the top of a tree. The chandeliers were swaying.''

The rolling quake caused electrical transformers to blow in numerous locations, wiping out power to at least 90,000 Southern California homes.

``Outside my window I could see blue explosions, and then I heard sirens for about an hour,'' said Dave Cleveland, a Northridge resident.

A hotel near Disneyland evacuated guests as a precaution and gamblers in Las Vegas paused over their slot machines and abandoned their hotel rooms.

``The whole place was shaking like crazy,'' said Michelle Fabian, awakened on the 18th floor of the Mirage Hotel.

In High Desert communities closer to the epicenter, merchandise flew off the shelves.

``Pickles, man. A lot of pickle jars,'' said Twentynine Palms city engineer Richard Pedersen, as he emerged from the city's Stater Bros. grocery store about 8 a.m. Saturday. ``The floors were pretty much impassable.''

A supervising nurse at Hi-Desert Medical Center in Joshua Tree said emergency room workers treated several people for injuries, the most serious of which was a lacerated foot.

Although it caused virtually no damage, the Hector quake was more powerful than the two most devastating temblors to hit Southern California in the last 30 years - the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and 1971 Sylmar temblor.

Both of those powerful quakes in the San Fernando Valley registered about a 6.7; Sylmar killed 58 people, and Northridge killed 57.

The initial quake struck at 2:46 a.m. and lasted at least 20 to 30 seconds, followed by hours of smaller aftershocks, including a 5.8, 5.3 and 5.0 magnitude, according to California Institute of Technology scientists.

``We have had hundreds of smaller ones, if not thousands,'' said Caltech seismologist Egill Hauksson. ``So far there is nothing unusual about the aftershock sequence.''

The most serious effects occurred out in the desert, closer to the epicenter.

About 47 miles east of Barstow, Amtrak's Southwest Chief leapt off its tracks but stayed upright, and only four of the 155 passengers were treated for injuries, none said to be serious.

``We were really, really blessed,'' said porter Randy Moore.

``Our saving grace was we were following a freight train,'' said conductor Glenn Morton. ``We were going 60 mph instead of the 80 mph we normally would do through here.''

Twenty mobile homes, mostly unoccupied, were knocked off their blocks in Ludlow, an Interstate 40 hamlet near the epicenter and the derailment. A concrete bridge over I-40 cracked. At least one supermarket was left with structural damage. Light damage was also reported on the sprawling Marine Air Ground Combat Center south of Ludlow.

The earthquake occurred in the same area that produced the 7.5 Landers temblor seven years ago, but it was not an aftershock, Jones said.

The magnitude-7.5 Landers earthquake in 1992 was followed a few hours later by a magnitude-6.5 quake in the San Bernardino Mountains in which one person was killed. There have been more than 70,000 aftershocks.

Hauksson, the Caltech seismologist, said the latest quake was 20 or 30 miles northeast of the Landers epicenter. It also had a smaller rupture length than Landers' 64-mile ``daisy chain'' of fault ruptures, he said.

Saturday's quake rocked the Twentynine Palms home of surf music guitarist Dick Dale.

``I was like a ball going back and forth in a pinball machine,'' Dale said. ``I was thrown back and forth. Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam, thrown from one wall to the other.''

Staff Writers Sherry Joe Crosby, Troy Anderson, Louis Amestoy, Kerri Ginis, Chuck Mueller and Andrew Silva, and Associated Press contributed.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, map

Photo: (1 -- color) Firefighters help a woman off the Amtrak train that derailed 47 miles east of Barstow. Four passengers suffered minor injuries.

Gene Blevins/Special to the Daily News

(2) Amtrak officials look over damage to the train after the 7.0 quake knocked it off its tracks.

Map: Hector Mine quake