By Lizbeth Diaz
MEXICALI, Mexico (Reuters) - Families huddled in parks and car parks in the northern Mexican border city of Mexicali on Monday after aftershocks from a big earthquake led them to sleep out in debris-strewn streets.
Two people died and around 100 were injured when a 7.2 magnitude quake rocked the Mexico-California border area on Sunday afternoon, Baja California Gov. Jose Osuna told the Televisa television network. One person was crushed in a collapsed house, the other hit by a falling wall.
The tremor, felt as far north as Los Angeles, cracked main roads, toppled electricity posts and knocked down an empty multistorey car park under construction in Mexicali, a prosperous city and busy border crossing.
Hundreds of people camped out overnight as smaller tremors shook buildings with cracked floors, walls and broken windows.
"I wasn't going to put my family at risk. Lots of homes have cracks," said Fermin Garcia, a teacher who slept with her family in a tent pitched between two shopping centres.
Broken gas pipes sparked a number of fires on Sunday, and darkened streets in Mexicali triggered car accidents, but no major buildings appeared to have collapsed.
Power was slowly being re-established on Monday, but many state-run hospitals lacked power and patients were laid out on beds in parking lots due to worries over cracked walls.
A highway connecting Mexicali with the nearby border city of Tijuana on the Pacific coast was ruptured by a crack at least a metre (3 feet) deep, according to a Reuters witness.
A liquefied natural gas import terminal operated by Sempra Energy south of Tijuana was not damaged however, a company spokeswoman said.
AFTERSHOCKS
Vacationers returning from Easter holidays were stuck in traffic jams and motorists reported difficulty finding fuel.
"Thank God nothing happened to us. Now we just have to wait until the police let us fuel up," said Maria Lopez, who had been waiting four hours to buy fuel to drive to Tijuana.
Sunday's quake rattled nerves in the United States and across tremor-prone Latin America which has been shaken by devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile this year.
Home to more than a million people, Mexicali is a centre for food processing and assembly-for-export plants.
The relatively shallow quake was centred in a lightly populated area some 30 miles (48 km) to the southeast of the city. For several hours aftershocks rocked the area.
Over the border in the U.S. town of Calexico, eight downtown blocks were closed off as Border Patrol agents helped police secure the area against looters. Stores had leaning awnings, smashed windows and broken vases in window displays.
"It was violent, like the earth was mad ... My home was shaking very violently, pictures coming off the walls, then the TVs came down," said local firefighter Channing Dawson.
Some Mexican families crossed into Calexico on Sunday to spend the night with relatives.
Police inspected buildings for safety. "If these buildings come down, people can get hurt, the second thing is looting," said police Lieutenant Gonzalo Gerardo.
Earthquakes of 7.0 can do serious damage to urban areas.
Some neighbourhoods of San Diego reported minor structural damage and burst water pipes. Callers to local radio said the rolling tremor made it hard to keep vehicles on the road.
In Los Angeles people felt buildings swaying.
Southern California with its myriad geological faults is prone to frequent quakes and many residents fear the next big one. The last to cause major damage was the 6.7 magnitude Northridge quake in 1994 that left 57 dead and 9,000 injured.
(Additional reporting by Tim Gaynor in Calexico and Robert Campbell, Tomas Sarmiento and Veronica Sparrowe in Mexico City; Writing by Catherine Bremer, editing by Alan Elsner)