Earthquake...

[Carlos Murphy]

Huh?

What earthquake?
I've experienced many quakes in my 36 years of living in CalEfornia but haven't felt a single one since moving to Nevada almost four years ago, just across the state line and in the valley east of Lake Tahoe.

For the BIG ONE in San Francisco when the freeway and Bay Bridge collapsed, I was going home from work on my 87 Harley doing 70 at the east end of the Dumbarton Bridge.
When I pulled into my driveway five minuets later I could see all my neighbors standing around and one said to me, "did you feel it?"

"No, feel what?", I didn't, only one box fell off a shelf in my garage but 20 miles away at work my tool box had moved 3 feet from the wall.

Any time there is a quake the news media reports on it and always says "THE BIG ONE" will happen within the next thirty years, they have been saying this for thirty years.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Mike, I've lived in the midwest for a good part of my life--1977-1979; 1984-1986; 1996-present--Iowa, Ohio, Indiana. This is the first time I've felt the ground move here. That's why I don't expect them here.

Of course, I could have been walking home from happy hour all the other times.

I have lived in Iowa/Nebraska since I was born in 1984, never have felt one. I would be fairly surprised at first if I did experiance one too.

And I don't drink either, so that rules that out.

I know one of the biggest quake on record happened in Missouri in the 1800's, but that is slightly beyond my time. My ancesters were still in Sweden/Germany at time actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Earthquake

 

[Ranger44]

Felt it in central illinois. Woke me up around 4:40. I felt one of the 2 aftershcoks around 10:20. This is kind of crazy and freaky to me. This is the first one I felt, and if I didn't know better i would have thought it was a dream. lol.

 

[MAKG]

The "big one" in 1989 wasn't a big one. It was moderate. Barely 7.0. It didn't even kill 100 people. It didn't even last 15 seconds. It got quite a lot of press because it occurred during the World Series and two buildings fell down in the Marina, a badly underengineered freeway in Oakland fell down, and one section of the Bay Bridge failed. Santa Cruz lost much of its downtown district, but only one person died in the county.

Compare this to the 1811-1812 New Madrid earthquakes. There were THREE major events (and perhaps 1000 minor events), all larger than any historical California earthquake. Though that part of Missouri was very sparsely populated at the time, the damage was enough to reverse the flow of this Mississippi River.

Note that the quake at hand is associated with the New Madrid Seismic Zone according to USGS. As for "never feeling one," it's surprisingly hard to identify an earthquake that lasts less than 10 sec or so. A map of all central US earthquakes in the last year is here:

http://folkworm.ceri.memphis.edu/recenteqs/

Note that you can barely feel a 3.0 earthquake unless you are right on top of it, and even then you'll quite likely blame the forklift operator next door for bumping into something. A 5.0 earthquake may cause damage right at the epicenter, and may be felt tens of miles away. If you're driving, even a severe earthquake feels like bad roads or a flat tire. There were many reports of suspected flats during the 1989 event, even from people on the Bay Bridge.

Note that a distant earthquake does NOT feel like a jolt or heavy shake. It feels like you're about to throw up or pass out if it's really bad. If it's not so bad, it feels a little disorienting, nothing more.

 

[Evan]

 

[Twizzler09]

I didn't even wake up for the one at 4-something this morning.... my Grandma told me about it after I got up at 9:45am.... didn't even feel any of the aftershocks.

 

[JohnnyU]

I grew up in CA and Tokyo, Japan. I don't even feel them anymore.

I guess there was a small aftershock around 10:14AM today as well. I didn't notice that and I was sitting at my desk at work.

The New Madrid fault is concerning, but there is nothing you can do. Make sure your HO insurance covers earthquakes, lol.

 

[MAKG]

There is plenty you can do. Secure your water heater to the wall. Reinforce cripple walls. Reinforce masonry. Secure heavy furniture to wall studs (e.g., bookcases and large TVs). And so on. This stuff is well known.

I've been in two 7+ magnitude earthquakes had had less than $100 damage and no injuries between the two.

And earthquake insurance is generally prohibitively expensive.

 

[blue83ranger]

I felt it at 4:30, woke me up and at first i though it was a tornado or just a real strong wind. I could feel the house moving and it sounded like the trees had a good breeze going through them. So i turned on our yard light to take a look and everything was calm. A few seconds after that, one of my mustang signs in my room was rattling around, and i still didn't know what it was I heard latter it was an earthquake. It was the first one i felt too, but i remember Dec. 3rd of '93 they said there was supposed to be a big one that was going to take down houses. So we took real many pictures of our house so we could remember it when it was gone I also remember it was supposed to happen 3 days before my birthday but it never happened (the earthquake, i still had a birthday )

 

[Will]

So we took real many pictures of our house so we could remember it when it was gone

I just got done worrying about the Yellowstone super volcano and now I'm supposed to be saying goodbye to my house because a crack is going to open up and swallow it?

So basically we are tiny fragments of organ matter, flickering with life, riding a shattered iron pressure vessel, fissured with cracks, straining in vain to keep billions of tons of pressurized molten rock under wraps and there are asteroids and comets streaking past--any one of them could leave a smoking hole through the center of the planet or suck the wispy atmosphere off on it's way past.

Gosh

And someone said I should worry that using plastic containers to keep leftovers might lead to early puberty.

Go for the early puberty, bubba. This is a dangerous place we live.


But what's a girl to do.

 

[Totalled]

Welcome to the club.

I remember the last mandarin shake in '88 knocked my on my ass in my yard in Iowa.

When you get a 6.8 and surf the asphalt, you can be a senior member...

 

[DeanMoriarty]

MrE Powers; I'm in High Ridge, pretty close to you. My sis and a few other people I talked to around the south county area got shook pretty good. Knocked stuff off their walls and tables.
I didn't feel a thing, but I'll probably sleep through the apocalypse.

 

[Mac]

A guy at work got a message from an old married friend from down there and he said "I haven't felt the bed shake that good in a long time"
Dave

 

[v-8power]

I was surfing the internet this morning when it happened. The first thing i thought was the washing machine was spinning unbalanced.(It usually shakes the house).

It was bad enough to wake my wife and she is a HEAVY sleeper.

 

[JohnnyU]

And earthquake insurance is generally prohibitively expensive.

At $110 per year increase (at least on my policy) it's not that bad.

However, when you think about the fact that whenever we get "the big one" they claim it will be 8+ on the Richter Scale, that's 10X worse than the 7.1 that shook SF in 1989. Not too many Midwestern masonry buildings will survive that. Hence, not a whole lot of point to securing a water heater to a wall that is likely to also fall down. China cabinets and bookshelves, etc are all secured just out of habit from living in CA and Japan.

I'm not saying we shouldn't be prepared, but if we try to prepare for every possible disaster, we'll end up like Brendan Fraiser in that movie where his parent's lock him in a bunker for 30 years....