Residents in Napa, California were awoken at 3:20 A.M. on Sunday by the magnitude-6.0 earthquake, the worst temblor to shake the Bay Area in 25 years. Three people were in critical condititon and 172 were treated for injuries at a hospital. Most of the damage was restricted to the older central downtown area and about 15 buildings were damaged too severly to allow people inside. Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency due to the damage in the Napa area. According to Pacific Gas & Electric in Napa, 20,786 homes and businesses lost power. The USGS predicted that the quake is likely to produce 30 to 70 small aftershocks of magnitude 3 to 5 within the next week.
All earthquakes in California are caused by motion between two tectonic plates - the North American plate and the Pacific plate. Some early reports suggest that the quake was perhaps provoked by the Franklin Fault, a crack in the Earth that was thought to be dormant for 1.6 million years. However, it can take scientists some time to identify the particular type of fault-line activity behind a specific earthquake, such as this one.
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