Quake

[rmr]

Are all our california friends ok?

Did you get shaken up???

Just thinking about you guys.

Yours,

Midwesterner on flat land.

[noxxville]

this sounds sick.......I miss earthquakes.

They made me remember that I was living on a real planet.

[lapietra]

There was an earthquake?

[rmr]

Earthquake (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47500-2003Feb22.html)

[lapietra]

Huh.
I fell asleep on the couch in front of the TV last night... don't know if that's why I didn't feel it...

Oh well. Believe me - I've felt my share... had a good ol' time during the quake of 1994. That happened around the same time of day (about 4:15 am)... I lived in a little tiny apartment with my one cat at the time, Kundri, in the third apt of five on the floor, third floor of 5, facing another building. It was pitch black, and the noise was horrific - breaking glass and cracking wood. It felt like someone had picked up the building and was shaking it around like a Cracker Jack box, trying to find the free surprise...
I freaked out & crawled under my futon (which was pretty dumb, considering if the building collapsed, I would be pinned under it...) The underside was about a half inch away from my nose. I was pretty sure I was going to die anyway. But the shaking stopped... I crawled out from under the futon & found my flashlight. Everything in my apartment had either fallen over or open, except for a stool I had taken with me when I left home (we'd had the stool my whole life; I had painted it white when I was ten and then added a rainbow & a pot of gold to the seat).
My cat was cringing under it, rock hard with fear.
I grabbed the cat carrier & shoved her in; grabbed an overnight bag I always keep packed, slipped on my Birkenstocks (I was already wearing cutoff shorts & a sweatshirt) and made my way outside, where everyone else was going. As I went down the first flight of stairs, I could hear water rushing far off... it began to get closer as I descended the second flight, and at the bottom I slipped and fell in about 6 inches of hot water - the water heaters had broken.
Outside in the parking lot everyone from the two apartment buildings had gathered - mostly Hispanic families, all speaking in rapid Spanish. I ended up connecting with a nice woman and her kids whose apartment was on the bottom level right by the entrance of a building - she shared a blanket with me, let me put Kundri in her car to keep warm (I didn't have a car at the time) and later in the morning we sneaked into her apartment & grabbed cereal & hot dogs for breakfast (I know, blech, but we were pretty hungry :))
The building was "yellow tagged", which means that the damage was mostly cosmetic - but the scary part is, earthquake retrofitting had happened only the year before. Things could have been very different if not for that.
Anyway - a great story actually comes out of this - Me & Kundri ended up staying with my friend Bill for a few days while I figured out what to do (I eventually moved to the apartment I live in now - I've been here for about 9 years this month). There were aftershocks every few minutes at first, then about a half hour apart, becoming gradually weaker and even farther apart. (They lasted well into a few weeks - I had trouble sleeping for a very long time after that, due to how dark and claustrophobic my apartment had been during the earthquake - I bought glow-in-the-dark stars & put them on the ceiling in my bedroom when I moved in here - it actually helped a great deal :D) So - every time there was an aftershock, Bill & I would jump up and go and stand in one of the doorways in his place. We did it a number of times that day, and it sort of became an automatic reaction.
So, that night, I slept on his hardwood floor in my sleeping bag... The next morning, Bill greeted me with, "So, did you win the sack race?" Apparently, the reaction to get in a doorway had become so ingrained that, after an aftershock that night, I had jumped up in my sleep, still in my sleeping bag, hopped over to a doorway until the shaking was over, and hopped back and lay down again, in my sleep. Didn't remember a thing. :)

[rmr]

Wow, that's one hell of a story. Thanks for telling it!