Earthquake!

[sfhogman]

1:45 AM: I was awakened about 15 minutes ago by a slow, rolling earthquake. Rattled the house some...the cat is now on patrol around the house. The USGS says that it was centered near Boulder Creek, CA , a small community tucked away in the Santa Cruz mountain redwood country. It's 65 miles south of western San Francisco, where I live.
5.0 is a pretty hefty quake; I hope the folks down there are okay.
Having been through a couple of Big Ones these things always leave me a bit on edge...
And so back to bed.

 

[RC44Mag]

Just saw on news. My nephew and his family are out in Benicia. Too early there to call him now but will later this afternoon.

 

[XUSNORDIE]

I remember the first one I experienced in Cali. Was in my rack in the 500 series barracks at Miramar. Rack vibrated away from the wall it was next to. Another one I was sitting on the couch in my apartment living room and the window cracked from corner to corner. I went through enough of them that when we had one in Maryland about 14 yrs ago everyone in the conference room thought there was an explosion....nope. I just said "Earthquake". Nobody believed me until the news hit their phones. They are an unusual feeling.

 

[coach]

I remember the Maryland earthquake. We all thought it was a big truck rumbling down Main St. A Chinese immigrant jumped up and ran outside immediately. It turns out he was familiar with earthquakes from his native land and did what he had learned to do when the ground shakes.

 

[thinckley]

We had a 5.7 quake near us on 3/18/2020. Right while dealing with the covid shutdowns. I was actually out of town for work, and though I was watching the news, I had no idea it had happened until I got a very confusing "Are you all okay?" text from my dad. My wife was freaked! As soon as the shaking was over, she pulled the car out of the garage and filled it full of emergency supplies. She was even planning on sleeping in the car that night until I talked her down.

It was a couple of weeks later that I found that the quake had cracked the kitchen sink drain. Luckily it was in an overhang so didn't cause a lot of damage, but I did have to attack it from the outside in.

 

[Chief 101]

5.0 is a baby quake

 

[Fox Mike]

I remember the Maryland earthquake. We all thought it was a big truck rumbling down Main St. A Chinese immigrant jumped up and ran outside immediately. It turns out he was familiar with earthquakes from his native land and did what he had learned to do when the ground shakes.

I too remember that one. Pictures fell off the wall in my living room. By the time I got heading for the door it was all over with.

 

[WAYNO]

The ring of fire has been very active.

 

[reuben_j_cogburn]

If we go 2 months without a quake you can feel, it seems weird. Whats cool is you hear them rumbling through the mountains before they hit... you get a few seconds warning....
I prefer them to tornado's......

 

[Jeepnik]

A 5. I'm not even waking up for less than a 6.5. A 5, won't even slosh any water out of the spa. Might set off a car alarm that's set way to sensitive.

 

[locked*n*loaded]

Years ago we had one here in Ohio. If I remember right, it was only a 3 - something, maybe a 4. But, it was a big deal here for use because we're not really accustomed to that kind of thing, ya know? They sure don't happen often here. It was kind of unnerving. I guess it's all relative to where you live and what you're used to.

 

[Johnny-Baseball]

The ring of fire has been very active.
View attachment 99986

That ring of fire is ALWAYS active. And a big quake somewhere on that horseshoe-shaped loop almost always triggered another large quake somewhere else. Big quakes were often preceded and proceeded by many smaller one. One major quake emanating from the Mindanao Deep (a 29,000-foot hole in the ocean's floor) spawned over 500 lesser quakes all occurring at that same location. I know from personal experience - we had to analyze and report on every one of them.

Our Mindanao, PI detachment (situated atop one of the most seismically active parts of the Ring of Fire) experienced earthquakes every week or two, a couple of them strong enough to tip over our equipment racks. The Mindanao Deep, Tonga Fiji and a couple of other deep ocean floor locations were notorious. The most repeatedly active above-ground locations were the Philippines, the Aleutian Islands and Chile. But no place along that ring was immune.

A 5.0 magnitude (on the Richter scale) may, or may not, be damaging. It all depends upon how deep the quake's epicenter was beneath the earth's surface. Two quakes: one shallow = damaging. One deep = yawn. Deep quakes occurred 100s of miles beneath the earth's surface, compared to 10s of miles for shallow quakes.

Each of my unit's 25+ seismic detachments was capable of detecting every earthquake occurring anywhere in the world. Each detachment's seismometers were arranged in a spiral array some 20 to 30 miles across and included 25 to 35 seismic instruments. Most seismometers were located on the earth's surface, but some were in 10,000-foot holes in the ground. Such configurations gave us directional detection capability for all wave energy - both short-wave pulses (measured in 100ths of a second) and long-wave pulses (measured in 10s of seconds), including both vertical and horizontal waves.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the US Coast and Geodetic Survey (USCGS)'s reported information on earthquakes - magnitude and location - came exclusively from our unit.

 

[Jeepnik]

The one bad thing about quakes is you don't gather any significant warning. Major storms, tornadoes and even wildfires can give up to days prior warning.

They made a big deal out of knowing a few seconds before a quake happens. That's long enough to do absolutely nothing.

You can build for it and prepare for the aftermath but that's it.

 

[xchecker]

Was living in Northridge in 1994. Woodland Hills in 1971. Both 6.5+. Woodland Hills I was 18mi from epicenter, Northridge, I was 1/2mi from epicenter. In '71 my bed, which was on wheels, rolled 8ft across my room. In '94, I woke up 3ft in the air over my bed! It was surreal! It felt like I was up there for 10 seconcds, but it was more like .5sec. It launched my fully loaded SnapOn 6 drawer top box 4ft across the garage onto the hood/fender of my wife's '82 Corvette. By the time we got out of the house(about 2 minutes), a house 150ft away on the next street over was fully ablaze. Chimneys collapsed, retaining walls down, pools half emptied and/or cracked and empty, uplifted driveways and sections of street, and that was just my street. I could go on. I never knew what PTSD was, but I do now. Took a year before I stopped getting jumpy every time a heavy truck made the ground jump or shake. Still, 5.0 or less barely makes me take notice. Unless it is right under your butt, there is likely no damage that happens. But it all depends on construction.
Northridge was originally tapped at 7.1 and later downgraded. I call BS on the downgrade.

 

[Johnny-Baseball]

While on Mindanao, we detected the 1971 quake. Within 15 minutes, we had our detachment's guys who had California family calling home via MARS-to-Ham operator connections - all before the quake was announced to the GIs in SEA (Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia).

Seems the DoD held up announcement of this quake to all SEA military - "to preserve morale." Immediately after DoD made the announcement, the MARS radio was jam-packed with phone calls back to the west coast.

 

[redhawker]

Born in that rocking, rolling state, so I've been through a few. 5.0 is at least noticeable, and if you have some loose stuff on a shelf that the cat batted over near the edge, it might fall off. Thankfully, I don't have to deal with that stuff anymore since I escaped Newscum's paradise almost 3 years ago. I think, in all that time, we've had one big enough to possibly feel (4.1 back last May) if you were sitting quietly in a room with some dishes in a cabinet that might rattle a little.

 

[jimbo1096]

Felt a few. Got shook out of bed early one morning while staying at a motel at the top of the grapevine highway. Got mad at daugter and her friend for waking us up until i realized what it really was

 

[gnappi]

Florida and the Gulf Coast have storms, the Midwest has tornadoes, the west coast has lots of stuff it seems as if few places are out of harms way. Wait, the northeast has none of that but crappy politics... I'll take the storms.

 

[thinckley]

northeast has none of that but crappy politics

Ice Storms, and possibly worse... proximity to Montreal.

 

[Armybrat]

While on Mindanao, we detected the 1971 quake. Within 15 minutes, we had our detachment's guys who had California family calling home via MARS-to-Ham operator connections - all before the quake was announced to the GIs in SEA (Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia).

Seems the DoD held up announcement of this quake to all SEA military - "to preserve morale." Immediately after DoD made the announcement, the MARS radio was jam-packed with phone calls back to the west coast.

Ah, the old MARS system!
When my family was stationed in Taipei, Taiwan 1957-59 we tried to use it to contact my brother at our cousin’s ham radio in San Antonio, Texas.
That attempt failed, and my mom started crying - as we had not heard brother’s voice in over a year.
(Brother was a student at the U. of Texas in Austin. Our cousin, the ham radio operator was a Physics professor at St. Mary’s U. In San Antonio.)

And to keep this on topic, while we were in Taipei we experienced a pretty good earthquake while I was in class at the Taipei American School.
In the center of the school’s large landscaped courtyard there was a pond with a 10’x20’ “island” that was for seniors only.
Anyway, when the earthquake started swaying the classroom’s lightfixtures, someone in the back hollered “Look at Senior Island!”.
A bunch of us 8th graders rushed to the door and saw waves of water sloshing out of the pond’s “moat”.
After a couple of minutes the ground swaying stopped. No real damage to the school as I recall.
But it was a very weird experience indeed.
A view of the school’s original campus as it appeared then (long since demolished, and moved to the suburbs where it still operates):

 

[stonebuster]

Florida and the Gulf Coast have storms, the Midwest has tornadoes, the west coast has lots of stuff it seems as if few places are out of harms way. Wait, the northeast has none of that but crappy politics... I'll take the storms.

You're correct about the NE politics but we do have occasional earthquakes and tornados but not to the magnitude or frequency of other states.

 

[Jeepnik]

Don't part of the North East US get Nor Easters?

 

[Jeepnik]

Speaking of MARS, I just used AUTOVON. We had a backdoor into the system. Call one fire station on a base Spain, to a fire station in California for example. The alarm center then connected you to an outside line and dialed the number for you. Thing is not all organizations had such easy access to the system. But emergency services...