East Coast peeps, are you shook up?

The USGS says you had a 5.8. It's not a bad idea to report what you experienced at the "Did you feel it?" link. The more data they have, the better they may be able to predict future quakes.

The earthquake thing

I remember my father telling me how terrified he was when he was awakened by an earthquake out of a sound sleep at one of his conferences in Santa Cruz many years ago. When I first moved out here, I really didn't know what to expect. I remember having seen news coverage of the Loma Prieta quake way back in 1989. Of course, I spent my first six months in the Sacramento area, which is less seismically active.


My first one occurred while I was watching the evening news one night. There was a brief  groaning noise and the sofa sorta twitched slightly. Honestly, I'd felt worse from trains uncoupling on the other side of Votee Park when I'd lived in NJ, but there was enough roll to make the studio lights at Channel Whicheveritwas rock on their hangers, a fact which was duly caught on live TV.


One night I was standing in the kitchen of our apartment over in Oakland when I heard a crash and felt a short jolt. I'd thought someone in the unit above us had dropped something big - like an entire refrigerator. "Are you OK up there?" I shouted at the nearest heating vent. No answer. Rich came in the door a few minutes later and told me he'd heard we'd had a temblor on the radio, but he hadn't felt it in his truck on the way up the hill.


Now I live even further down the hill from the Hayward fault. Alameda has a lot of surviving pre-1906-earthquake architecture. Whether this has anything to do with our location or the fact Alameda wasn't swept with fires after the quake, I don't know. This house would've been a year old then. Anyway, my apartment takes up part of the second and all of the third floor. The few small quakes I've experienced at home are an interesting sensation because the shock wave travels upward from the foundation and one can feel a noticeable shimmy, particularly up here in the garret.


Is it scary? Oddly enough, the little ones don't bother me. I figure small releases of pressure are preferable to major slippages.