Don't leave home without your lights especially during an earthquake

This is a story about tonight. An earthquake of magnitude 5.7 with epicenter of ~15 miles from us hit tonight. (closer to Modamags house)

For me I've lived in the Bay Area my whole life and felt many earthquakes growing up with them all my life. I've come to know that I have an internal earthquake sensor that trips above approximately magnitude 4.0 earthquakes. For ones smaller like 2.0 and 3.0 I tend to freeze. For earthquakes above 4.0 I tend to panic and take evasive maneuvers.

I can also tell the distance or epicenter here in the Bay area as the closer you are the more vertical the shaking is and the farther you are the more rolling like waves action in the ground effect.

When the earthquake hit tonight I jumped up and headed for the patio door which is adjacent to the couch I was sitting on. This is the closest exit and leads to a flat top patio structure and then the backyard.

Cindy was standing behind the couch and heading in the opposite direction to stand in the pantry doorway which is a very small room leading to the garage. That's probably more safe of an area than the route I took if the house were to shake and break up. My mind was racing, adrenaline had kicked in and I remember now 1/2 way to the door I tapped my left front pocket to assure myself my flashlight was there since it was dark outside.

It turns out I had taken it out of the pocket on the couch and the 2nd light I normally carried had also been removed and I was naked with no lights.

It's funny that making it to the door took a few seconds and that checking for the pocket for a light came as a response about 1/2 way to the doorway that the thought that occurred so early in my reaction of all the other thoughts racing through the mind.

Luckily there was no damage. The lights, power and everything stayed on the whole time. Three computers, lights, TV.

Wayne

Yep, I felt the earthquake too. I'm about 10-15 miles north of you
(Los Altos) and it didn't shake too bad. I was out shopping for groceries when it went off and definitely knew there was an earthquake happening but it didn'nt knock anything off the shelves or anything so it was actually kinda cool. And I did have my 3 standard EDC lights with me but didn't need them.

Wayne and Scottiver, I'm glad neither of you incurred any damage. All in all getting caught right outside your house with no flashlight doesn't seem so bad in the scheme of things, especially if you can get to your car and whatever lights it has. In the event of a large quake I'd probably rather have a radio than a flashlight, just to get news and instructions. In your emergency preparations one thing some of us may not have thought of is having a recent and complete set of computer backups stored far away from home. That wil probably save a lot more hassle if a big quake clobbers the house, than the inconvenience of being temporarily without a flashlight in an urban or suburban area.

My only point of observation is that I checked for my light, not, that it really means anything.

The 89 earthquake I was basically in the same location (couch) getting ready to watch the world series. That was a bigger quake and I basically took the same route outside through the patio. In 89 I stood in the doorway and watched the house shake back and forth each time more dishes would fall out and come crashing down. I was also somehow fascinated with the full glass of water on the TV tray that swayed to and fro and not any water splashed out. Funny what you concentrate at the moment. After it subsided in 89 we bee-lined to the backyard and waited for more activity. After a while we headed to the front yard along with all our neighbors. I walked to our right to the corner intersection to talk to our neighbor and after talking for a while I finally realized that I was holding onto my Togos sandwich. I had not noticed till then some 5-10 minutes later what I was holding onto!

My Fenix P1D-CE pretty much resides full time in my pocket. The rest of my collection is on the bedside table, beside the BugOutBag (which also has flashlights in it.

Glad to hear a fellow CPFer is ok following a quake!

:thumbsup:

Wayne, that's very interesting about the glass of water that didn't spill.
In '89 I was at my parents house which has a swimming pool. When the quake hit I went to run into the backyard and the quake caused a tsunami in the swimming pool and at least two feet of water splashed out of the shallow end flooding the backyard. That freaked me out more than the quake.