Big California Earthquake

Just hit. Details to follow....

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Officially hit at 11:17 PST, 6.4 on the Richter scale, epicentered 7 miles NE of San Simeon.

I was in my office of the 6th floor of a seismically-retrofitted office building in downtown San Francisco, and I felt the building sway for something like 10-15 seconds.

BTW, San Simeon is 4 hours away by car!

Not quite sure if what I felt was the "big one", or one of the reported aftershocks.

Reports coming in now that in the South Bay, it continued on for much longer (i.e up to 2-3 minutes).

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

i hope everyone is ok.be safe

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Felt it real good in Palo Alto

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

once we had a earth quake here in ga like 9 months ago or so i think , i never felt one before i had no idea what was hapening thought house was falling of foundation. or i was loseing my mind lol but then it was in papper next day

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Wow, hope you are all alright.
That must be a crazy experience.
Here in West Viginia, we have basically NO natural disasters, except some occasional flooding.

What do you ppl do? Use douple sided sticky tape under EVERY object in your house? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

I was in the shower! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

I never realize right away what happened. I started to sway in the shower, and just thought that I was off-balance or something. When I got out my dad asked me, "Did you feel it?" and I replied, "Feel what?" Only after that did I realize what had happened.

Here in Santa Barbara, we got the feeling of being on a boat and swaying back and forth for a little bit.

The phone lines are PACKED! You'll be very lucky to get a dial tone. The authorities say it is best to call after an hour or so, so that the people who need to call 911 can do so.

I hope everybody is okay!

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Just got off the phone with my mother in Pismo Beach (about 40 miles from San Simeon) and she had a few boxes jumped off shelves, a couple broken glass pieces from picture frames.
I know it sounds insane to east coast people, but she's lived over sixty years in California and this is the first damage of any kind she's ever had. I look at people who live in flood plains and just shake my head. I'm sure they look at me and think I'm crazy. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Felt a little tembler while eating lunch in my car here in So. Cal.

No biggie. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/huh.gif

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

I was here in foster city (by SFO) on the 12th floor of my building. Felt like being on a ship. Our building is on rollers, so we sway quite a bit up here. Definately an interesting ride.

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

In SoCal it felt like being on the big ship U.S.S California as we drop into the Pacific Ocean.

Changed thread title back. The center of the quake was hundreds of miles from San Francisco. Effects in San Francisco were very minor.

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Went through several while living in Japan. It's always a really creepy feeling - things that are supposed to be solid aren't

Prayers for all out there.

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Holey moley stay safe!!!

It's a family joke that when we lived in La Jolla on the coast in the 60's and my sister was about 3 the whole house shook. My dad said "Oh, wow an earthquake!" and my sister correctly stated "No daddy that's an airplane breaking the sound barrier!"

(Sometimes they'd crank it a little early)

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

I guess you could say I'm about as used to it as you can be.

I've personally felt probably over a dozen earthquakes in my lifetime, most noticeably the big one in 1989 that took place during the World Series, and levelled much of the San Francisco Marina area, bridges and many freeway overpasses.

Personally, there's no real panic reaction, just a recognition of the event and then I just as quickly make my way to the most structurally sound area of whatever room/building/place I'm in and "wait it out".

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

Sounds WAY too creapy for me.

Although we can boogy before a Hurricane arrives, Tornados are sneaky f*ckers!!! One of our customers lost a whole garage a month or so ago!

Still, I'll take wind and water over crumbling concrete!

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

I moved to Oregon not too long ago from Virginia... We get quite a few tornadoes back home in VA. I would assume West Virginia Gets em too. I remember one touching down in front of my house... took out the big oak that was in the front yard...

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

We had a pretty big one in Seattle a couple of years back. Magnitude 6.8 near Nisqually.

The quake started as a single "thump", which I mistook for the roofers dropping a piece of machinery on the roof. Several seconds later, a north-to-south swaying motion became evident, which increased in intensity over the next 15-20 seconds. By this time, it was no longer possible for anybody in the building to stand unaided. The dominant sounds were those of breaking glass and large bangs & thumps from furniture, large appliances, and home electronics falling to the floor; and of doors banging back and forth. A loud slow rattling noise was also evident, along with various creaks, cracks, and groans from the building's structure itself. The sound of the elevator car slamming into the walls of the elevator shaft was also evident.

At around 30 seconds, the breaking glass and falling object noises became spaced farther apart as fewer and fewer objects remained upright. The water was thrown out of toilets and fishtanks (those which didn't come down), and hanging fixtures banged against walls or broke off the ceiling.
Finally, at approximately 40 seconds, the violent swaying subsided, and was pretty much gone around ten seconds after that.

A buzzing noise became evident after everything stopped moving. Three sources were located: a computer monitor soaked in water from the fishtank, an outlet strip shorting out from water entry, and the fishtank pump running dry after too much water was thrown out of the tank.
No other damage to live electrical systems was found.

Down the 3rd floor hall, I heard a toliet flush, and then the sound of splashing water and that of something being knocked over and breaking. Presumably, the toilet flooded and its owner was pawing through debris to find their plunger or some towels.

Nobody around here was injured, but my unit sustained virtual total damage to almost everything I have here. Almost whatever was unbreakable did not become broken (I say "almost", because a Turtlelite II became broken after something heavy fell on it), but most breakable objects DID break. (and I say "most" because a large majority of my glass insulator collection just bounced around on the couch and did not become broken when they flew out of the window)

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

I was taking a peak at my xmas presents when it happened, went outside and saw that the water in my pool was swaying. Its amazing how much force gets released, that last one I felt in my area that actually worried me would probably be the Northridge Quake.

Re: Big San Francisco Earthquake

I now honestly thank the City of San Francisco for enforcing their post-1989 upgraded seismic building codes. We had to move out of our built-in early 1920's office building, into small cramped offices for close to 2 years, in order to have out whole buildling re-engineered to be up-to-spec.