Los Angeles Earthquake: Magnitude 3.7 Quake Hits near View Park-Windsor Hills

A 3.7 magnitude earthquake has struck California, around 7 miles southwest of the center of Los Angeles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake struck around midnight local time, about 1 mile south of View Park-Windsor Hills. It could reportedly be felt in different parts of the Los Angeles Area.

People living in the area who felt the quake took to social media describing their experience, including Chrissy Teigen.

Twitter user @karlamera said: "I felt the quake. My first earth quake! First there was light rattling around the apartment and it got stronger and stronger. Scary."

Others said that the impact of the quake felt stronger than the figure given.

"It felt waaay stronger than that!" Said Twitter user @gsanta27

Meanwhile, user @PK81660157 said: "I live in south central and it felt like something slammed into the house at first."

"I'm in North Hollywood, and it felt way stronger than that," said @ThePeachChef.

According to the City of Los Angeles earthquake website, there have been 26 earthquakes above magnitude 1 in the last 24 hours. The event in View Park-Windsor Hills is the strongest.

Jascha Polet, a seismologist and Professor of Geophysics at Cal Poly Pomona, said that the location and mechanism of the earthquake appears to be consistent with the Newport-Inglewood Fault System.

Polet added that the quake, which struck at a depth of 7.4 miles according to the USGS, was preceded by a magnitude 2.1 foreshock in almost the same location around 15 hours earlier.

The Newport-Inglewood fault stretches for around 47 miles from Culver City through Inglewood to Newport Beach where it moves into the Pacific and connects with the Rose Canyon fault system. It has long been considered one of the most dangerous in Southern California because it sits below some of the region's most heavily populated areas, the Los Angeles Times reported.

First identified in 1920, it was responsible for the second most deadly earthquake in the history of California. The Long Beach earthquake struck on March 10, 1933 with a magnitude of 6.4 with the epicenter located along a southern section of the fault. The quake caused widespread damage and resulted in the deaths of around 120 people.

Scientists think that an earthquake of magnitude 7 or greater along the Newport-Inglewood fault could do significant damage to some parts of Los Angeles, perhaps more so than one striking along the infamous San Andreas fault, which runs to the north of the city.

"If you're on the Westside of L.A., it's probably the fastest-moving big earthquake that you're going to have locally," Jones said. "A 7 on the Newport-Inglewood is going to do a lot more damage than an 8 on the San Andreas, especially for Los Angeles," seismologist Lucy Jones, founder of The Dr. Lucy Jones Center for Science & Society, told the Los Angeles Times.

The headline of this article has been updated. The article has been updated to include additional information on the earthquake, the faults in the area and historical information on earthquakes in the region.