Jul 29 2008
I survived my first California earthquake
So, it was about 11:45 this morning and I was sending out some email. There was kind of a thud and the apartment shook. This was my thought process.
Man, not the neighbors again. What are they doing anyway?
Wait, I don’t think this is the neighbors. Could this be one of those “earthquakes”?
Everything is kind of shaking. I wonder if there is something I should do? Like duck? Run? Hide under the sink? I think I’ll just hold on to my computer monitor so it doesn’t fall over.
Wow, look at that shelf, shaking back and forth. Almost enough for my stuff to fall, but not quite.
Is this going to stop soon? Is the building going to shake apart? This is pretty weird.
Then, it stopped. Everything seemed to be okay. It seemed like it was about 20 seconds but that’s pretty subjective since I felt pretty strange while it was happening. So apparently we had a Magnitude 5.8 on the Richter scale. I wondered how long it would take to hit the net so I did an immediate search and got a cool page from Cal Tech.
POTD
There were about 30 measured aftershocks, later the site said “46 earthquakes on this map.” I didn’t feel any of them. On the map there, Pasadena is probably the closest dot to me.
Biggest since 1994
Alright, so I got to experience a good one. The news says no one has been reported dead, or even injured, though I’m sure some freak accidents probably occurred from the shaking. I always wondered what an earthquake was like. Now I know.
Right after the quake, everyone and their mom decided they needed to call each other about it. It pretty much killed the phone lines, no one could call anyone for about an hour.
Glad to hear your survived. Survived to blog another day!
I was there for the 1994 one, hah!
Near that Long Beach dot.