Earrrrrthquaaaaake!

[h2orowe]

Did anyone in California feel this? It was a 5.8 Earthquake situated about 2 miles from Chino Hills in San Bernadino (as of right now, that's what they say its magnitude is, it was 5.6 earlier.) It was fucking crazy. I was on my bed, cuddling with my girlfriend, when all of a sudden my DVDs fell off of my dresser and a bunch of other stuff fell too, the whole house felt like it was rolling around. That was a pretty scary earthquake.

[Duke Luke of Juke]

I'm just glad we're okay. When we were cuddling and all those DVDs fell, I thought we were doomed for sure.

Seriously though, earthquakes suck. At the moment on CNN no major damage has been reported, so that's pretty good.

[ellie]

Damn son you were fast with the creation of this thread!

Yeah I felt it! I was driving home from the post office and stopped at a red light, and suddenly it felt like my car was swaying side to side! I just bought the car about a month and a half ago so I don't feel like I know it all that well yet, and so I thought at first that maybe my car was about to explode and perhaps I should exit the vehicle. Then I realized everyone else nearby also was stopped and looking confused, and that is when I realized it was an earthquake and not my car preparing to combust.

What was the worst earthquake you've ever been in? I've only felt a few, this one seemed very comparable to the earthquake I felt last summer which woke me up in the middle of the night.

[ak24]

Felt it here, but nothing fell, phew!

[haterllnation]

My bad folks. I was crumping (krumping) and I just dropped it and you got the result. Again, my bad. I got a couple of text messages from people ranging from "It was scary" to "Bad ass." Fun times.

[Plekto]

I'm in Los Angeles as well. It rates a "meh" from me. Just like in Japan, these things happen fairly often. 5-6 range is merely annoying. 7+... now that's the real deal. Things start to break and fall apart then.

Guess I'm a bit jaded. heh.

[Darkfox]

I felt it here, I thought it was vertigo at first...

[Roxie]

What is this quaking of the Earth of which you speak?

[akitaka]

haterllnation, earlier today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gxwb-HOgng

==
4+ still sucks if you're inside of an older building. Back in Japan my family and I spent a few nights in a temple hostel; the building was *swaying*. I thought it was just the wind (i.e. God farting on the building), but later the news busted out with a magnitude 4.2 not too far from where we were at (I can't remember the location, though).

[bluestars87]

Nope, didn't feel it. Thank goodness I don't live in So Cal.

[Pierrot le Fou]

The earth was not intended to move like that.

Errrr, save for orbit and rotation.

Boston is a beautiful place -- no earthquakes, no poisonous insects, no tornadoes, no floods, no hot weather and very few hurricanes.

Why the fuck did I move to Japan?

[KAIZOKUx]

It's funny that in the month I've been in Tokyo I've felt more earthquakes than I have in the all of the years I've lived in CA. But now when I'm gone there's a big one!! Well, I guess this was more of a SoCal one anyways, right?? I called a few friends (who are in the Bay Area) to see if they felt it and most of them were like: "What, there was an earthquake?"

Sounds pretty wild though!

[Kaji]

No sign of it up here in San Jose; first heard of it when a friend up in BC was asking whether her friends in CA were all right.

[Vic_Rattlehead]

I hate the aftermath of British Earthquakes. Three days it took me to find out that my pen had fallen off the desk and rolled under my bed! :(

[Pierrot le Fou]

We had an earthquake in Boston once. My mother screamed for me.

"Pierrrrrrrrrrrottttttttt!!!" she shouted from the other room.

I came running.

She pointed and gestured, "Look! LOOK!"

And lo and behold, the glasses were shifting a bit.

"Dear, that's an earthquake." she explained.

And so you can imagine my shock when I came to Japan to experience shit falling off shelves and people running out of the building during an earthquake. The ground is not supposed to do that. Swaying wine glasses are about what I can handle.

[mochyan]

I read about it online. All the socal friends told me they were fine as I got back home from summer school in norcal.

First week I moved into dorms last year, we had a nice small earthquake to welcome us. -_-''

[Plekto]

One person got injured by falling objects. Nothing else happened. We thankfully take engineering of buildings as seriously as they do in Japan, at least of most new structures. :)

[KAIZOKUx]

"California has a 99 percent chance of experiencing a major earthquake within the next 30 years, according to a report by state and federal agencies."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/30/earthquake.ca/index.html

Everyone, GTFO of California!

[Minibeefcake]

haha they've been saying that for years and years...

We had something just like that up here around the bay area a couple months ago*. I think even the magnitude was really similar. Was a pretty good shake and all it really did at my house was dislodged dust bunnies at the top of the shelves...

*edit: apparently "couple months ago" = last year! Gee time flies...

[Trump]

I want to be in a strong earthquake... just once... to experience it. I think it would be fun!

[japanat]

I want to be in a strong earthquake... just once... to experience it. I think it would be fun!
I was in the outskirts of the Kobe quake - fun isn't the word I'd use for a strong quake (a 4.0-5.0, sure, but...). Woke up to being bounced across the floor in my futon, unable to even get free, let alone stand up, and watched the overhead lamp spinning dizzily on the end of its cord. A slab foundation on my house kept the walls from being damaged, but the neighbors all had cracks, and we're maybe 15 km from the epicenter.

My friend in Nada-ku, Kobe, stepped out her 2nd floor window to the ground as her house just leaned to the left and collapsed. If she'd stayed in 30 seconds longer, she would never have come out at all. Another friend lost a Mercedes and a Jaguar when their apartment building pancaked down on the basement parking and first floor shops; not to mention the whole 8-story building, which he owned, being a write-off.

Then there were hundreds of aftershocks over the following 3 weeks or so, and hundreds more over the next 6 months. You could even hear the fucking things coming as buildings in the distance shook: rumble, rumble rumble rumble, RUMBLE!

[Pierrot le Fou]

I was in a 4 on the Japanese scale, and that was bad enough (stuff falling off shelves, difficult to stay balanced, etc.), so I can't even imagine what the Great Hanshin Earthquake was like considering that was 6+ or 7 in many places...

[h2orowe]

Is there a Japanese scale? :watson: For magnitude, I thought there was only the Moment Magnitude and the Richter Scale.

[Pierrot le Fou]

You could have at least fired up wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Meteorological_Agency_seismic_intensity_scal e)

[vasca]

That's one nice thing about Mexico City (or at least the very specific part of the city where I live in); the city is a soup bowl surrounded in every direction by dormant volcanos (of the same type that destroyed Pompeii, you know, the really nasty ones but thankfully they are sleeping so it's cool); yet it's really damn hard to ever feel an earthquake (at least in the region of the city I live in).

The soil in my area is this hard clay so when you guys say a 5.8 and are all stooped, an earthquake of an exact intensity wouldn't be felt in most of Mexico City. The few parts where anything would be felt would just be a slight rumble with no damages. An earthquake has to be at least 6.0 for me to ever really feel it at all.

It's more probable you'll see streets in downtown Mexico City getting "sucked" 20 feet into the soil all of a sudden (damn scary stuff indeed, it happens in average once a year here because the soil under the city is hollow because they sucked out all of the water). I don't live in an area prone to that, but it's pretty damn creepy when you see it on tv. People just literally get sucked by a vacuum into the floor getting into their car never seen alive again.

I did experience a pretty strong earthquake with stuff on bookshelves falling off once about 7 years ago. I had no idea what the hell was going on at the time and took me 30 seconds to realize I'm in an actual earthquake. One of the cats was in the same room and the poor creature was scared to death. I even hit my knee against the desk haha.

I felt a decent earthquake in the 5.8 esque range last summer at 2 am and thought that my bed was posessed like the exorcist haha. I was reading a book at the time and kinda freaked out. I turned on the tv right after it ended and the news stated it was an earthquake.

Fortunately after the 1985 earthquake destroyed half of the city, Mexico's building code laws have a zero tolerance policy towards buildings unfit to resist medium strength earthquakes. It's rare to even see cracks in buildings after earthquakes over 7 even in very poor neighborhoods.

In total, I've probably only felt about 4 earthquakes at all the 15 years I've been living in Mexico City.

---

You know, if I ever experience a really big earthquake someday, I'd be really creeped out if I'm driving under one of those concrete jungle gyms while that are so prominent in Los Angeles when one happens. Which do you prefer? Fall off or get crushed like a sandwich?

[stsparky]

The earth was not intended to move like that. Errrr, save for orbit and rotation. Boston is a beautiful place -- no earthquakes, no poisonous insects, no tornadoes, no floods, no hot weather and very few hurricanes. Why the fuck did I move to Japan?

Boston is not for everyone. I - for one - hate Summer there. And the eastern states are due a big earthquake. Earthquakes are better than either tornadoes or hurricanes IMIO.

I didn't feel this one but the wife did. It made the happiest place on Earth sucky for 3 hours.

[Radiance]

The earth doesn't move unless we make it move over here in atlanta. :O I thought we were having an earthquake one day when I was at my new office. "Did anyone else feel that?" "Oh, blasting at the rock quarry a few miles away."

[Trump]

Let me clarify, I'd like to be outside to see and experience what an earthquake really involves. Similar to the fact that I'd like to be near enough a tornado to get a feel for their true magnitude.