And the earth moved...

[julesjones]

I lived in the San Francisco Bay area for several years, causing a certain amount of commentary from friends about earthquakes. The only one I ever actually felt was the largish one three or four hundred miles away in 2003.

I moved back to the UK a few weeks ago.

This morning, I woke up to wall-to-wall the earth moved on the first page of my flist...

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Your name is Neil AICMFP.

(The last big one occurred in 1989 six weeks or so after I visited. I know how you feel.)

[julesjones]

[grin]

I think I'd be more disconcerted if this had been a serious one, rather than merely big enough to grab people's attention. Brooks lives five or ten minutes' walk from where I was, so his description is what I'd have felt:

http://brooksmoses.livejournal.com/103746.html

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

ritaxis appears to have been closest. Brooks' description sounded pretty harmless in comparison...

(Am I outing myself as a writer or as a geographer when I say that I've never consciously felt an earthquake and I'd like to?)

[There was one when I was about three, but I didn't notice anything special, although my mum felt it; and another in Manchester that I might have felt but didn't]

[julesjones]

Brooks was a couple of miles closer, but as he says, the direct path for him was through mud, whereas Ritaxis will have had direct transmission through rock.

The 2003 San Simeon quake that I felt was a big quake (6.5), but far away. I didn't realise what was going on at first -- I was recovering from flu, and just thought I'd had a dizzy spell until the people around me started saying, "Did you feel that?" I wasn't the only one -- this was when I was working in the electronics superstore, and we'd had a bit of a flu epidemic at work, so there were quite a few people in the checkout crew who initially thought they were just feeling dizzy. Apparently the poles for the "till open" lights were swaying quite noticeably, which was obvious to the customers in the queue because they were looking at them, but not to those of us standing right next to them... "Did you feel it?" map for that one's here:

http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/shake/ca/STORE/X40148755/ciim_display.html

It felt very different to the one I felt many years ago, which was small but fairly close by. That was the classic "heavy freight train going by" vibration and noise -- and since there was a freight line right across the road, that's what I initially thought it was.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Am I outing myself as a writer or as a geographer when I say that I've never consciously felt an earthquake and I'd like to?)

There are several ways you can arrange to simulate the experience, depending on the type of quake you want to feel:

* Live 20 feet from a freight rail line and be selectively deaf so you don't hear the whistle.

* Have an extremely large truck back into your house when it thought it was pulling out of the driveway.

* (for very mild quakes) Have a brief dizzy spell.

* (for the Loma Prieta quake, experienced in a car) Have six large athletic men jump up and down on your car bumper.

These ideas are mostly for personal experience of the motion -- although the large truck example can also simulate some of the interior damage, if done properly.

[brooksmoses]

You're not outing yourself, I think -- immediately after the shaking stopped, our conversation was along the lines of "You know, I've been here 14 years, and I've never felt an earthquake before. Aside from being scary, that was actually kind of cool!" And it was clear that all four of us were rather glad that we finally got to feel one.