“I was eating my breakfast when the room started rolling. I dove under the table just as I heard an explosion outside and a chunk of cement flew through my kitchen window. That’s when the screaming start across the street.” Hayward resident Mike Beamer said.
The building that collapsed was home to McHenry's Auto supply and firefighters used ropes to stabilize the shop so that they could search the building and fix a gas leak they had detected.
"Twenty-one fire personnel, 12 police and five American Red Cross workers responded to the building collapse, with some arriving within four minutes of the quake," Jennifer Vu, a public information officer from the Hayward Fire Department said.
Due to this quick response from the fire department and American Red Cross only two were killed and six were injured in the duration of the building collapse.
"Three of the six people injured were hurt seriously enough to require hospitalization and were transported to Hayward General Hospital," Vu said. "No other serious injuries have been reported in Hayward."
According to Penny Gertz, the epicenter of the earthquake was under the Hayward Hills.
"The quake was a strong one and it occurred on the Hayward fault, which runs under the hills," Scientist Penny Gertz from the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park said.
This earthquake had a magnitude of 6.4 on the Richter scale
"People as far south as Los Angeles and as far north as Redding felt the quake," Gertz said.
Those who were injured are in the hospital receiving treatment but we do not know who they are.
"Names of the dead are being withheld pending notifications of families," Vu said.
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