Wine Country's Quake Damage Could Top $1B

Northern California is assessing the damage after the region's worst earthquake in 25 years and while no deaths have been reported, at least 100 people have been injured, more than 10,000 are still without power, dozens of buildings have been wrecked—and there is a heck of a lot of broken glass in the Napa Valley wine country. Huge numbers of bottles and barrels of wine were ruined as yesterday's 6.0 magnitude quake caused widespread damage across the valley, the San Jose Mercury-News reports. Wineries say the quake will cause serious losses, but the harvest now under way shouldn't be affected. The US Geological Survey believes total damage could be more than $1 billion. More:

• Authorities say that across the region, around 100 homes have been red-tagged as unsafe to return to until authorities declare them safe—and they are only a third of the way through the process of tagging buildings, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

• There have been more than 50 aftershocks but state officials say that they now consider a major follow-up quake unlikely, reports the Los Angeles Times.
• Three of the injured are in critical condition, including a 13-year-old boy injured by debris from a falling chimney, according to the AP. Some 172 people were treated in the emergency room of the Queen of the Valley Medical Center in Napa after the quake, though it's not clear how many of them were there for quake-related injuries.
• A USGS geophysicist says that despite the damage, the earthquake was "truly small" compared to some that California has experienced. "We owe wine country in part to earthquakes" that created the terrain, he tells the New York Times. "We all want to enjoy the fruits of the quakes, so we all have to prepare for the downside, too."

(More Napa Valley stories.)