Was in the basement of a building in Thousand Oaks, CA when it hit.
Didn't really register as a quake as I'd just plonked a 20lb item down on the table next to the machine I was working on, and attributed the panel & pipe shaking to the vibrations that occured (although I did try to recreate it without success!
) Didn't think anything of it until I went to my customer's office and he asked if I'd felt the quake!
Didn't get cellphone signal until about 30 minutes later when I went for lunch, by which time there was a Voicemail, e-mail and textmessage waiting from my Mum in England who'd already heard about it on the news!
(Bad news is the only thing in the Universe known to travel faster than the Speed Of Light!!
)
I think much of the panic about quakes is due to the devastation they cause in underdeveloped or unprepared areas, such as what happened in Bam, Iran or Chengdu, China. Buildings there aren't or weren't built with earthquake awareness in mind. CA has had regular quakes for a long while, and things here are built with preparedness in mind.
Make no mistake, it's still scary when one hits, knowing you're at the mercy of the earth, but it's reassuring to know that especially since 1989 when the Loma Prieta quake hit the Bay Area that all CA construction is built with quakes in mind. It's obviously not going to withstand a destructive magnitude 8 or higher without damage, but they're few and far between, (although we're apparently overdue a "Big One" on the San Andreas, so I'd hate to speak too soon! SFGTP4 anyone?
) and it's built with safety in mind.
I'm currently in a nice Jacuzzi tub in a hotel in Simi Valley so the aftershocks (if there are any) won't register, unless the water starts jumping out of the tub onto the laptop!
Glad to hear that everyone closer to the epicenter here escaped without too much damage. 👍
I never understood why people in the South get so much flack for living in tornado alley, but people who live right on fault lines don't catch anything.
It's a timing thing as far as I can see. In the South/Mid-West hurricanes and tornadoes (respectively, before anyone tells me Ohio hasn't been hit by a hurricane!!
) hit more or less yearly and do millions of dollars of damage. Quakes hit relatively infrequently and for the most part create a little inconvenience and minimal damage in CA until we get a severe tremor (about every 30 years or so in the north or the south) but I do agree that a quake generally affects a greater area than a tornado.
Sounds right. I just heard someone here describe it as "horrible". I'm kinda surprised. I would have described it as "mild".
