Monday, April 5, 2010

Earthquake veterans

Okay, so I plead ignorance.  I'm not sure how people who live all the way up in Santa Rosa noticed the 7.2 magnitude quake in Baja California and I didn't.  Then again, at the birthday party I went to, no one even knew about it until I mentioned it.  If it wasn't for Facebook, the uneventful, but rainy Sunday may have gone by with the earthquake unnoticed.


The scary part is we have been getting more and more violent earthquakes recently around the globe, and you know... that movie 2012 just came out (and I recently just watched it).  Then again, have anyone just thought that maybe, just maybe the Mayans were just too lazy to write anything beyond 2012 considering their civilization was extinct long before?

1989 Bay Area Quake

I have been in a couple major earthquakes in my lifetime, and numerous smaller ones that I felt and either didn't register or just did not care.  The largest earthquake I experience was the 1989 biggie -- the Loma Prieta.  The magnitude was 6.9 and caused both damage in the Marina as well as the collapse of a section of the Bay Bridge.  Most of our neighborhood was unaffected besides for the prerequisite power outage.

Here is my experience as an elementary school student.  The only reason I remember the year is because that was the big "Battle of the Bay", World Series Championship between the cross bay rivals: the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics.  I was outside cleaning the back yard because my family had just recently moved from an apartment to an actual house, and I was about to get my first golden retriever.  I've had dogs in the past when I was very young but never really had my own pet.  When the earth shook, I immediate auto-piloted, rather stupidly, into the house because I was trained by school for the past 4-years that it was safer to hide under a desk (than apparently the open back yard).  My mother, who was in the house, smartly decided to run out of the home and we intersected at the sliding glass door to the back yard.  Needless to say, my mother grabbed me and dragged me back out to the yard.

The earthquake only lasted maybe 15-seconds or so, and that was that.  The next few days we spent the evening in candlelight and the daytime having neighborhood BBQs.  To entertain ourselves, my father and I even caught a wild pigeon with a cardboard box.  We eventually let the bird go.  It was pretty fun.  

Recent 4.0 - 5.0

I have to admit I was rather jaded after surviving that major quake with little damage.  In 2007 there was a relatively minor earthquake that occurred in the Bay Area registering somewhere near the 5.0 range.  My ex at the time was at a supermarket and freaked out.  Apparently so was everyone else because the cell towers were flooded with so many calls that most lines were busy.  I was told later that items were falling off the shelves.

My experience.  I was then living on the 2nd floor of a two story apartment and watching TV and drinking a beer.  As I was seated, I felt the apartment shake.  I waited for the shaking to cease, got up, went to the fridge, got another beer, and sat down to finish the program.  No biggie.


Let's hope that all these shaking around the world will release enough tension in the tectonic plates so there won't be any more massive earthquakes.  I'm just glad I'm not in Southern California.  With all the natural disasters going on there, the earthquake, the fires.

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