Damage inside the Minit Shop in Ridgecrest, Calif., after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake hit on July 4, 2019.
The 10:33 a.m. Independence Day quake was centered 10 miles northeast of Ridgecrest, a city of about 29,000 people. Its epicenter was in the remote Searles Valley area near where Inyo, San Bernardino and Kern counties meet.Full coverage: 6.4 quake jolts Southern California on July Fourth » The store reopened later in the afternoon, and a steady stream of customers came by to fill their tanks,At 4 p.m. several aisles were still closed. Hairspray cans, diapers, beer cans and pet food kibbles littered the floor. Workers swept up broken glass and wiped off products to see what they could salvage and put back on the shelves.
Cooper, 30, got a call from the owners of the Minit Shop asking for his help cleaning up. He and McDonald looked for reinforcements and reached out to Brandon’s mother, Helen McDonald, who Cooper calls his “adopted mom.” “That’s the blessing of a small town,” Waseem said, handing another crate to the family to store drinks that survived the quake.