feel an earthquake

I’ve lived in earthquake zones all my life, San Francisco, LA, Tokyo, Hawaii. I feel kinda lost if it aint shakin’.

I live in Cali. and have I ever felt an earthquake, NO!

Even though its dangerous, it would be really cool.

but unless I move to an earthquake prone area, the chances are slim, and that would be a pretty flimsy reason to move somewhere.

Magnitude 6.0 would shake things up pretty good. And if it’s a rolling quake, you might get a sort of oceanic feeling.

On the other hand, the Northridge Earthquake of January 17, 1994, was an experience not to be repeated, and I would not recommend as a goal wanting to experience such a quake.

Although the quake registered a relatively meager 6.7 on the Richter scale, the peak ground acceleration was the greatest ever recorded in an earthquake near a US city. This refers to the violence of the up and down motion of the ground.

How this translates in real terms follows.

I was awakened out of very sound sleep by what I perceived to be a cataclysm. It was as if a giant paw hand wrenched the building I was in off the ground and was shaking it, much as your mother may have shaken a mercury thermometer when you were sick as a child.

It took between one and two seconds to process the experience, and recognize that it was an earthquake.

There was no getting out of bed. Instead, I held onto the bed to keep from being thrown out of it.

After what felt like a very long time and was actually about 15 seconds, the shaking stopped. I gathered my children and ran them down two flights of stairs and out of the house. No one else was around. There were no lights, anywhere. The stars were completely visible. We walked to the pool area in search of other people. About half the water had sloshed out of the pool. We walked back toward our condo, encountering neighbors coming outside, some of them bloody from furniture having fallen on them.

There was another jolt, this one between 5 & 6, quite enough to make you wonder if this wasn’t to be a whole series of shake ups.

When it became light and we went back inside, I wondered how we had gotten out of the house without noticing what we were going through, dark as it was. Bookshelves at the top of the stairs had emptied all down the stairs, and toppled over. The contents of the kitchen cupboards and the refrigerator were tossed all over the kitchen, dining room, and down the second flight of stairs. Jars were broken, nasty glass shards covered in jam and peanut butter, syrup, soy sauce, honey – it was an unbelievable mess.

The walls of the house were ripped from corner to corner, as if the structure had been wrung like a washcloth. Tiles on the floors & countertops were cracked.

And the furniture was tipped, tilted, overturned. Anything that had been in cupboards or on shelves was on the floor, much of it broken.

As a condo association, we had earthquake insurance. But the way the damages got written up, they were below the deductible. I could not afford to hire people to come and replace the floors and mend the drywall, and so over time and with help, eventually completed the clean up and the repairs wiht my own hands.

Be careful what you wish for. I got off easy.

6.8, 1994, California.

I woke up seconds before it started, randomly. Thanks, God.

Your vision shakes. Don’t forget to stand in a doorway.

When I was little, there were a few earthquakes, but I always managed not to feel them. My mom would say later to me “did that earthquake wake you up?” or “while you were bouncing on your bed, there was an earthquake – did you feel it?”

Then when I was older, I again always managed to miss them! The one I remember in particular, was large enough to affect a considerable portion of Ontario. I was sleeping ON THE FLOOR at the time and I did not feel it! Oh, I was mad.

So here I am in Kentucky visiting my husband’s family, and a 2.something one hit in the middle of the night. It woke me up! It was amazing to feel… though I can’t imagine feeling a big ‘un. That would be terrifying, even if there are no buildings around!

It lasted quit awhile, while varying between a rippling feeling, and shaking back and forth.

What an amazing thing… just thank goodness it was small!

califorian, so i have felt many, including whittier and
northridge. both were pretty scary.
there are small ones that make conversation the next day or two “did it wake you up?”. the one the other night did. it was 4.2, with the epicenter a couple miles from our house.
i am glad i no longer work at memorial stadium, on the uc berkeley campus. it’s a deathtrap…sits right on the hayward fault. hopefully the big one won’t hit during a football game.

I got shaken enough to get out of bed.

The epicenter was in an adjacent state.

Considering this was a ‘mild’ quake in the range of 4.9 to 5 on the Richter Scale

I would pass on repeating this goal ever again…

The bed was shifting on its rollers and the bedroom door was opening and closing on its own. I thought it was kind of cool until realizing that for me to be experiencing those signs far from the epicenter meant fatalities near it. An acquaintance’s dad died on the Richmond bridge and my own mom was on the 48th floor in downtown San Francisco. Not cool at all. Not an experience to collect.