Earthquake

[RogueUSMC]

My momma was a California girl so we would travel out there annually to visit family. When there was a little quake, we would get excited and not stop talking about it...we thought it was neat. Kinda a novelty thing.

When THEY came to visit us in North Texas however...lol. The mention of a tornado on the TV would make them almost lose their minds. Us? We'd go out in the front yard to go look at it...lol.

That being said, when I was stationed in 29 Palms in the early nineties, that big one in SF had me worried until I got a hold of my mom's family and found out they were safe.

[G26ster]

During my 11 years living in Alaska (and 4 in N. California too) I experienced many earthquakes. I remember my first one in Alaska (while indoors) the most, as the walls in my house (and windows) literally became "wavy." It was like a psychedelic experience I guess, and it was surreal. "How could things bend like that" went though my mind. That, and dishes, etc. falling off shelves and lamps hitting the floor made it pretty memorable. The ones we had yesterday here in the DFW area, I didn't feel at all in the Mid-Cities area. 3.0 is pretty much just a slight rumble. Of course the weather ( severe thunderbumpers, tornadoes) here in N. Texas scare me more than I ever was in Alaska or California

[The Annoyed Man]

So, it IS just a perspective thing and what you get used to living around.

Oh, you are absolutely right, it is exactly that. As others have pointed out, earthquakes don't really bother me much, but tornadoes are another thing entirely, particularly as my home doesn't have a root cellar. I know my house was built up to whatever code existed in 1984, but a safe-room lined in ShotBlocker was not part of the deal; and there's no room on the property to dig a shelter.

Purely coincidentally as I was typing that just now, the neighborhood tornado warning siren was being tested........which gave me pause for a couple of seconds, never mind that it is nice and sunny outside right now....

I'm not absolutely blasé about earthquakes, I'm just not put on edge by small ones, as I've experienced easily hundreds of smaller quakes in my lifetime, and a half-dozen or so major quakes.......so I guess you could say I'm "acclimatized" to them.

A coworker of mine at the time when the Northridge Quake hit was a student at Cal State Northridge and lived on the second floor of the (formerly) 3 story apt building on the left in this picture:


She had never experienced a quake before, and this one woke her out of a sound sleep as her building collapsed into the underground parking. The first floor was now underground - with fatalities, I might add - and her second floor apartment was now suddenly on the first floor. Now, you have to picture this woman, as she was quite striking and beautiful in an Amazonian kind of way. She was a 6'3" tall Jamaican black woman who had attended U-Conn on a full ride basketball scholarship and then transferred to CSUN, and she had never experienced even a minor quake in her life......and here she was deposited suddenly a full story further down than she had gone to sleep at. She told me later that she didn't even pause to think. She jumped out of her bedroom window into a planter, and ran off down the street in nothing but her panties, in a total panic. Someone stopped her and put a blanket around her shoulders, and then police were later able to let her and the other tenants back into their apartments, a few at a time, so they could collect essentials. She was unable to get anything but a few articles of clothing, her ID, a little cash, and some jewelry. Anything that she could not stuff into a trash-bag and carry out in that one trip was a complete write-off, as the building was immediately condemned to be knocked down as soon as the first-floor bodies could be recovered.

That's an earthquake.

But thing about earthquakes - at least in the U.S. because of modern building codes - is that the devastation to homes never approaches what a large tornado can do to a small town. The poor people of Moore, Oklahoma had it much worse than most Northridge residents, even with the significant damage to buildings there. Earthquakes can demolish buildings, and even the people in/under them, but a Tornado can simply scrub the earth clean, even removing topsoil, and leave nothing behind recognizable as a town. Unless a building falls on you, or a freeway overpass collapses onto your car, you're going to be OK in an earthquake. You might get bounced around a bit, but an earthquake isn't going to suck you up out of your bed, and drop your body half a mile away in a cornfield. Tornado damage may generally be much more localized, but it can remove any sign that man once lived there. Earthquake damage can be spread all over a geographically large area, but the damage can vary from fairly mild to fairly severe without any immediately apparent reasons (other than good construction and adherence to building codes). Living up against mountains tends to minimize the effects because there is less soil liquefaction, while living out on an alluvial fan, or on top of a landfill can have dramatic effects as the soil liquefies and transmits the shockwaves. During the Sylmar quake - my first big one that I can remember - I actually saw shockwaves rolling toward me through the ground, looking just like swells on the ocean. Scared the crap out of me. But after that one, I kind of got immune to the panicky kind of fear that some people feel. But I'll tell you that I will feel a whole lot better when I can buy a place with a storm cellar.

[RogueUSMC]

You forgot what I consider the biggest plus tornados have over earthquakes...if you can see it, you can get out of it's way.

[The Annoyed Man]

You forgot what I consider the biggest plus tornados have over earthquakes...if you can see it, you can get out of it's way.

This is true....most of the time.

[Cedar Park Dad]

You forgot what I consider the biggest plus tornados have over earthquakes...if you can see it, you can get out of it's way.

Not if its at night

Or raining heavily

Or boogeying along at 80 mph.

[RogueUSMC]

It is kinda eerie when you are outside in the spring...the wind is blowing about 40mph and it looks like it's about to come a torrential downfall...then, the wind stops, no birds are chirping, no dogs are barking, it's perfectly still. You look around rotating 360degrees thinkin', "where you at?"

In '79 when we got hit in WF, they said a twister had been spotted on the ground out by the stadium (about 1.5 miles from the house.) We went outside to watch it. We looked that way and didn't see anything but dark on the horizon. We climbed up on the roof of the pick-up to see better. Still didn't see anything. When it picked us up off the cab of the truck, carried us across the street and laid us pretty as you please in the grass, we realized it was a BIG tornado. We didn't realize the dark on the horizon WAS the tornado...lol.

Dad said, "get the girls in the car." We drove over to the church out by the lake and parked in the parking lot. Dad told us that if it steered toward us, we were going to the big culvert under the road. It didn't and we sat in the car and watched it pass us about a mile away. The thing was about 3/4mile wide with a damage radius about twice that.

We had a looooong night of diggin' folks out of their houses. The next day, we went to grandmas because there was no power or water at the house and no estimate of when it would all be back on.

Getting back into town a few days later was a hassle. You had to prove to the National Guard six ways to Sunday that you lived there before they would let you back into town. it was crazy.

Most all of the other twisters that we saw or chased were never doing more than about 35-40mph and all they did was troop across farmer Brown's pasture and tear up his barn, then went away. If you saw one, you radioed it in. If nobody else was around, you were the spotter. You stayed on the radio telling them what direction it was moving and how fast. A week later, everyone nearby brought tools and lumber and we put another barn up where the other one had been.

[ELB]

...A coworker of mine at the time when the Northridge Quake hit was a student at Cal State Northridge and lived on the second floor of the (formerly) 3 story apt building on the left in this picture:
[ Image ]

I drove by that apartment building after the North Ridge Quake. I lived in Topanga Canyon at the time, about 9 miles from the epicenter. My perspective is that big earthquakes scare me something fierce. I was just barely awake when it hit, it was about 4:30 a.m., which was my normal time to get up. I had just remembered that I didn't have to go to work that day (I was in the USAF and it was MLK day, federal holiday), wondered why the cat wasn't on the bed, and then...CRASH. Sounded like every piece of glass in the house was breaking over and over, and the bed was heaving. I wrapped up in the sheets and rolled over onto the floor, on the side of the bed away from the windows, because I thought sure they were breaking. It wasn't just one shimmy and its over, it went on and on, seemed like. Turns out the house was hardly damaged -- it was an old wooden frame cabin-like thing, and it swayed and screeched but didn't break.

A good part of Santa Monica, LA, and The Valley was trashed tho. I think people outside the LA area don't give that earthquake credit for how many buildings it destroyed. Hundreds in Santa Monica alone, and in the valley around the epicenter there were probably thousands of damaged and destroyed houses. That apartment building got all the press because of the deaths and eerie way the first floor disappeared, but there was a lot more to the North Ridge quake than that.

[cheezit]

That north ridge earth quake hit 2 miles from my house. I lived not far from the kaiser hospital that lost its second floor. I used to work for the market across the street.

[C-dub]

A bunch of years ago my wife and I were watching our son marching in a parade in Schenectady NY when debris started coming off the top of the building we were standing in front of. At first I thought it was someone on the roof being very rude and moved back toward the facade, and then as car alarms, burglar and fire alarms erupted all over the place my spidey senses kicked in and I dragged my protesting spouse out to the middle of the street. I was right, it was an earthquake, and although we never really noticed the ground moving under our feet, it did break up the parade as fire and police participants went full code three to get back to their districts in response to all of the alarms. No major damage, but upstate NY is not one of those places where one would expect any sort of seismic activity, so it was on the local news for days.

I was at a function at Allen city hall and we didn't notice anything.

No kidding. I was up there, sorta, in Orange County from '83-87 and don't remember any.

[baldeagle]

I just realized today that I felt it last night. My wife was on the phone and I was watching TV. I noticed a bumping noise, like someone was knocking on a wall, and I thought she was doing it.

I've been through earthquakes in San Francisco. These are nothing. When your TV stand starts rolling around on the floor, pictures start falling off the walls, and the seat you're sitting in is vibrating, THAT is an earthquake. A minor one, but an earthquake.

[uthornsfan]

Thought this was good.

[C-dub]

Thought this was good.

I'm not one of them, but that's funny.

[The Annoyed Man]

That north ridge earth quake hit 2 miles from my house. I lived not far from the kaiser hospital that lost its second floor. I used to work for the market across the street.

The epicenter of a significant quake is no place for the weak of spirit. I was driving down the 605 on my way to work and was about a mile from the magnitude 5.9 Whittier Narrows quake epicenter when it hit. Try driving a van with a loose steering box through an earthquake epicenter. LOL.

I was in Pasadena when the Northridge quake happened, maybe 25 miles away as the crow flies, and it shook the hell out of our apartment building. The 7.3 magnitude Landers quake was 100 miles away as the crow flies, and it shook the crap out of us........and was followed 3 hours later by the 6.5 magnitude Big Bear quake which was 75 miles away as the crow flies, and it shook the crap out of us. The Sylmar quake was a 6.5, and it was 25 miles away, and I watched as shock waves traveled through the ground toward me.

Being anywhere near the epicenter of a magnitude 6 or greater earthquake is no place to be if you have any alternatives. But they are still not as terrifying as having a large tornado close by.......at least to me.