Crystals, fossils and strands of fine jewelry were mostly in their places in the San Juan Bautista-based Tops Rock Shop but a few framed pictures were askew following two earthquakes Wednesday night.
Shop owners opened stores 500 feet from the San Andreas fault line the day after magnitude 3.8 and 4.2 earthquakes shook the town. Merchants ran business as usual in one of California’s more shake-prone cities.
“Those were pretty strong,” said Jan McClintock, the owner of the Tops Rock Shop on 3rd Street. “They were stronger than our normal ones.”
The first was a magnitude 3.8 earthquake two miles south of San Juan Bautista at 10:21 p.m., according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A second earthquake struck at 10:26 p.m. It registered at magnitude 4.2.
McClintock estimates the ground shook for at least five seconds but was relieved to see only one necklace and a few wall hangings were askew when she walked into the her store.
“We’d been hit once before and shelving fell and we lost a lot of merchandise,” McClintock said.
The store manager, Kammie Osborn, lives in San Juan Bautista and wasn’t surprised to feel an earthquake. It did startle her children.
“For me it’s a normal thing, but my kids … it was an event,” Osborn said.
Just down the street, clockmaker Ronald Paulk stood in his Mission Clocks & Watches store, which displays about 600 time-telling devices including a wall of cuckoo clocks. Not a single clock fell in the shake-up, though several grandfather clocks were strapped to shelving to prevent them from falling. For Paulk, who lives in San Benito County, earthquakes are a common occurrence.
“They get a lot of earthquakes in Hollister,” Paulk said. “I think that’s why they call it the earthquake capital of the world.”
Each time there’s an earthquake, Paulk always thinks about the larger one scientists estimate will strike the area.
“There’s going to be a big one coming sooner or later,” he said.
