Around town, crews have spray-painted in the snow with fluorescent orange paint. A circle means the building is safe. An "X" means the building is uninhabitable, and a question mark indicates that officials don't know.

Pat Notestine was beginning her shift at Stuart's Foodtown when the earthquake hit. The ceiling buckled and items flew off the shelves, smashing onto the ground. Signs dropped from the ceiling and she panicked.

"It felt like the end of the world," she said.

The aftershocks that have hit the town have not done anything to ease fears, said Yvonne Stuart, the owner of the town's only grocery store. The aftershocks have been hitting all day, something experts say is not uncommon in the wake of a trembler of such magnitude.

Authorities said 45 to 50 families have been displaced from their homes and are seeking assistance from the American Red Cross said Elko County Undersheriff Rocky Gonzalez.

Wells Mayor Rusty Tybow said as many as 13 buildings had been severely impacted, if not totally destroyed. Inspection teams were being sent to all of the county's dams and bridges.

"I think everybody in town has been impacted," Tybow said.

The first priority for Nevada officials was going door-to-door in the city of 1,600 residents to make sure there were no serious injuries, Burns said.

"Our highest priority right now is knocking on every door in town," he said earlier in the day. "We want to make sure no one is trapped ... that the refrigerator hasn't fallen on someone and they can't move."

Utah State University professor and structural engineer Marv Halling brought two graduate students and a technician in his department down from Logan to view the quake's impact.

"We came down to see any structural damage to be viewed, something to learn," Halling said. "All of the damage I've seen is what you'd expect with this size of an earthquake."

As Halling and his group have walked around town they have seen what the benefits of reinforcing a building can have and the extensive damage that can occur on older, unreinforced buildings.

With one building in particular, Halling said, it was evident that the efforts the building's owner had taken to reinforce it had paid off, making the difference between potentially heavy damage and apparently only light damage.

In many places, nerves were rattled more than anything.

Humberto Cervantes, owner of Better Deal Pawn Shop in Wendover, Utah, was putting on his shoes and getting ready for work when he felt the quake at his apartment near the Wendover airport.

"The whole building was shaking," said Cervantes, who lived in Los Angeles for several years and has plenty of experience with temblors. "It was a little bit strong, even for here."