One baseball game probably saved hundreds of lives that day. Oakland and San Franscisco were playing in the World Series, the two local teams in the Bay area. That is a very rare occurrence, and therefore many people were inside for the start of the game, in the well-constructed stadium or had left work early, etc. If there were no game, that bridge and freeway would have been packed with rush hour traffic.
This is definitely true! My dad had come home early from work to watch the game, although my mom was on the road (coming home from the grocery store & said it felt like she had a flat tire). There was virtually no rush hour traffic that day.
I was 22 years old and lived in San Jose, 50 miles south of San Francisco and close to the epicenter of the quake. When it started we ran outside to the front yard. I looked down the street and the road was literally moving up and down about 10 feet like waves in the ocean 🌊.
I remember this so clearly, even though I was only 11 when it happened. Kabir, you really have no notice as to when an earthquake is going to happen. I grew up in Southern California and have felt and lived thru countless earthquakes both big and small. That’s what makes them so dangerous and scary. You don’t know when they’re going to occur or where. They do have drills, duck and cover. They used to tell you to get in a door way because that’s a strong point of a building if you’re inside, but now they tell you to get under something sturdy such as a desk or table. The only thing I can say is that I do remember before each earthquake is that the dogs in the neighborhood and our own would start barking like crazy and getting anxious. Animals can sense it.
I was 13 and lived in Kansas and remember this. I remember thinking I’m so glad I had to deal with tornadoes and not earthquakes! That shit looked so scary just watching it on the news!
Doorways are only secure in thick-walled Adobe homes. If you look at houses destroyed by earthquakes, the doors are crushed, too. A sturdy hardwood table is your best bet indoors.
They are certainly sudden, unpredictable, and potentially very dangerous, but I don't consider them scary. I was also born and raised in southern California, and I've always found earthquakes below a magnitude 5.0 to be a nice surprise, and rather enjoyable. It is only when they get above magnitude 5.0 that they become a concern. Now that I live in south-central Alaska, I experience a magnitude 5.0 earthquake on average once per month. We also have a lot of dog teams in Alaska, but none of them have ever detected an earthquake before it occurred, and we average 47,500 earthquakes per year.
The first warning you have of an earthquake is typically when the room that you are in begins to move. Though, having said that, I was once camping in the desert and I felt a slight vibration and then heard a rumble, as the main shock approached, and then traveled past us. That was the oddest earthquake I've ever experienced, and I've felt probably dozens in my lifetime.
Was living in San Jose when this happened. I distinctly recall watching our hardwood floors rolling like waves on the ocean. Literally. To date, it's the most terrifying experience I've lived through (and I've been shot at). Our power was out for 5 days, and the aftershocks continued for weeks after.
Seeing footage of this when it happened was really scary - I was only 9 years old, and had tons of relatives in California. I remember having a ton of anxiety hoping they were all ok and waiting 'til my Mom got word from them that they were. Years later as an adult, I watched documentaries and TV footage of the quake, and it was said that if that game had not been going on when the quake started, SO many more people would've been on the roads and at their homes or work places. Hundreds more could've been hurt or killed, but they were relatively safe at the baseball stadium. 🙂 I grew up in the Portland area in the Pacific Northwest. What they said about it being more dangerous a threat up in Washington and Oregon for a devastating earthquake is absolutely true, and it's not just that what frightens people around here. We are located within three different mountain ranges, most notably the Cascades, that of which huge quakes could trigger any number of those mountains to erupt. There's 8 in the PNW - 5 in Washington, 3 in Oregon. Only one of those has erupted in my lifetime - Mt St Helens, and that was over 40 years ago. We're very overdue for a quake in this area; a couple hundred years overdue.
I'm a baseball fan. I was watching the 1989 World Series between the two Bay Area teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. It happened just as Game 3 was about to start. The screen went dark. When it came back the police had driven onto the field and were telling the fans in the upper deck to evacuate.
If it hadn’t been for that cross-bay World Series it’s very likely that many more people would have died. Because of the game many people had left work early so they could watch the game at home or at the local sports bar. Traffic on the freeways that collapsed was much lighter than normal.
I was also watching the game from Reseda, CA, at the time. Thankfully, I had moved to Alaska in 1991 so I missed out on the magnitude 6.7 quake that hit Northridge in 1994.
@@AlaskanGlitch but you move from California that had a 6.7 to Alaska that has earthquakes that range between 8-9. Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire.
I was in it and was working on a high rise and had just gotten off work. the building i was working on was about 3 blocks away from where the freeway collapsed, and they took heave equipment from our site to look for anyone still alive. I was across the bay when it actually happened, and that was the first quake that was big enough to have to hang on to my car to keep upright. Im always amazed at how much roads flex, because the road looked like it was wave of water going up and down, but never broke apart.
I grew up in SoCal and my first earthquake was the Sylmar Earthquake in 1971. It was a 6.5 that lasted for over 10 seconds (a lot longer than it sounds), and I remember waking up to my bed shaking its way across the floor. This was the earthquake that started the retrofitting process because it was absolutely devastating. A big earthquake starts like someone trying to yank the ground out from under you. Little earthquakes (which is what the vast majority of earthquakes are) just give you that vibrating feeling you get in your feet when you're standing by the side of the road and a great big truck goes by.
I lived about 200 miles east of San Francisco and it took a few seconds to get to us. It was still strong enough to slosh the water out of the pool at our apartment. The fact that more were not killed is a miracle since it hit right at 5pm when the highways were full of commuters leaving work.
Also if you want to see another big quake, search for the Northridge Quake in 1994. That one scared the 💩out of me. How do they feel? They’re all different. Some are scary, others you’re like “Oh an earthquake” because you get so used to them. Some are rolling, others feel like they’re swaying, some are really jerky or jolting, others shake. Some last only a few seconds, others last a lot longer. Some you barely even notice.
This one was really bad. I lived in the Area near Gardena and it was rough as far south as we were. My boyfriend ( now my husband) lived further north , just north of LAX and all of his dishes came out of his cabinet and his refrigerator moved across the kitchen. It was scary.
@@gailw415 I lived between Corona and Lake Elsinore and I remember jolting awake and thinking oh just an earthquake go back to sleep and then it got so strong that stuff was flying off of my shelves and I jumped out of bed and got in the doorway. It seemed like no matter where you were within that radius it was bad. And it was long. Felt like that thing went on forever.
I lived in Orange County at the time and it was rough even there. My Aunt lived close to the epicenter and Mom and I drove to help her because she was so scared. We were terrified of every overpass we had to drive under.
When I lived in Southern California there was always the fear of “The Big One” and we wondered at first if Northridge was it. When we found out it wasn’t I was even more afraid of what that predicted massive earthquake would do. I always called my family in Texas immediately because after about half an hour all phone lines would be overwhelmed and go down and I didn’t want them worrying over me. This was before cell phones and internet. The first injuries that usually get called in are heart attacks from people getting so scared.
This earthquake happened during rush hour. People were rushing to get home from work. However, it could have been worse. Having the World Series in San Francisco helped keep a lot of people off the road, because they were either at home watching the game, or at the stadium in the stands watching the game in person. So as bad as it was, it honestly could've been worse.
That's right. On most work days at that hour, the Cypress Freeway was wall-to-wall traffic, but on that day the traffic was relatively light. Many more people would have died if they hadn't been watching the game somewhere.
I'm in a suburb in Southeast Los Angeles. The big quakes tend to have a rolling/sliding feeling. Smaller quakes shake and kind of feel like air turbulance. I keep a month's worth of canned/dried food and drinking water on hand for eventual "Big One" as we all call it. I also keep a backpack in my car incase I'm out when it happens, got clothes, food, water wind-up radio and flashlight, solar charger for my phone. I'm always surprised at how many friends and neighbours are not prepared/think it won't happen.
I was in Oakland during this. I had just driven through the double decker freeway that collapsed. Known as the Cypress structure. It hit when i got off the freeway 2 exits away.
In 2007 in Southern Maryland I was reclined in a dentist chair with my dentist and his assistant working in my mouth when I thought one of them was lightly shaking the chair. The assistant said to the dentist “did you feel that?”. Then everything started to violently shaking. The earthquake could be felt from Virginia up to Pennsylvania. I never knew the east coast was in a region susceptible to earthquakes. It was foreign to me and most of us.
I remember this, I was a kid at the time outside tossing a football around with some friends, it landed in the road and I went to pick it up, I I go to grab it it moved, then I realized the whole road was moving, most fascinating to me was all the parked cars along the street were bouncing like they were driving along in a line hitting potholes and bumps, like one car would bounce a certain way then a moment later the car behind it would bounce the exact same way and that movement went up the line like a wave, it had stopped shaking where I was standing but you could still see cars bobbling around at the end of the street.
"Intraplate" earthquakes happen rarely, mostly on old, mostly-inactive faults, far from plate tectonic boundaries. They are (usually) less severe in magnitude (energy). But in the eastern US, the energy is transmitted much Farther, through truly ancient, crystalline bedrock. The three "great" 1811-1812 quakes in New Madrid, Missouri shook all the way to Washington DC, and Boston.
I live in Oregon and before I bought my current house I checked everything I could including the local bridge retrofits, rock strata, flood potential and landslide possibilities. I have camping gear for four seasons in case my house is uninhabitable, canned and dried food, firewood stashes and medical supplies along with three 5 gallon containers of water that is not potable. I figure the water will be good enough to do laundry with. I made sure that my house is tied to the foundation and is made of wood for flexibility. I have been through earthquakes in the past. One from 1964 made the ground roll like ocean waves as we were driving down the street, another was a vibrating rumble that made the dog go nuts and yet another was a jerk back and forth when I was sitting on the sofa. You just never know what kind or combination you are going to get. You have to be prepared for anything. I have two freezers full of food and candy, coffee and cigs to trade for what I don't. If we lose power I have a generator for the freezer with the meat so we don't have to have a giant barbecue for the cul de sac. We are expected to lose power and access to gas for months. This is serious business.
Earthquakes feel like the floor underneath you is a wave in the ocean undulating up and down. Some feel like the floor is moving left and right at the same time. The best analogy that I can think of are those fun houses at the carnivals where the floors move in different ways.
each quake is different. I was in the '71 Sylmar, CA, '89 Loma Prieta & the '94 Northridge quake. Some jolt up. Some are like being on a boat in ocean swells, some shake violently side to side.
Best way I can describe it (I only experienced a small one), imagine your standing on a rug and someone is trying to pull it out from under your feet but there's someone pulling on the other side as well and it's going back and forth.
I live all the way across the country from California but I remember watching the coverage of this as it happened. I remember how horrific it was to see images of the collapsed upper decks of the roadway, and realize that people got crushed in their vehicles. Just awful. It is heartening to know that a lot has been done to help mitigate the impact when it happens again.
At the start when you said, "What was that?", it was a double decker freeway that collapsed, top to bottom crushing the cars on the second level. Had there not been the World Series, which had lots of people home already, hundreds of people would have been caught in that. I was 300 miles away, just sat down to watch the series when I felt a huge bump. I actually thought my Doberman had bumped into my chair while playing. That's when the game went off and Al Michael's said " We've just had an earth......". I don't remember him finishing that sentence. I started channel hopping until I found a station that was up. I was up all night watching the efforts to stop the fires, rescue people and just to pray. It was horrendous. I've been in bigger quakes, several, but not one with such destruction, except Northridge.
I lived and worked in Oakland. I got stuck in my office, upset because one of my direct reports kept me at my desk and I wanted to pick up my kid from daycare and watch the game. We were on the 16th floor when it hit and I ducked under my desk pulling my coworker with me. Our building was on rockers and tipped from side to side. One employee stood in the middle of the office screaming and another who had been at the copy machine was moving back and forth along with the tilting of the building, the copy machine moving with her. Thank goodness it had a strong plug it it would have gone out the window. Afterwards, we ran down 16 flights of stairs which had separated from the walls. My car was trapped in the garage. It had been parked on an upper floor and the electricity was out. I was fortunate enough that one last taxi was outside the building and a bunch of us went for it. We agreed to share. On the way to the home for two of us, we needed to pass under the 880 freeway. Traffic in our direction was stopped to allow cross traffic to go. With no electricity the traffic lights were off. It was taking so long that the two passengers decided it would be faster to walk. Later when we were allowed to go as we went under the 880, we discovered that our portion was still standing, but the freeway had collapsed on both sides. The cross traffic were cars coming off the on ramp from a part that hadn't yet collapsed. My house was in the opposite direction and the driver had to pass by the BART station. No trains were going anywhere because there was no power. People saw the cab and tried to rush us. The driver said as soon as he got me home, he was going home. We finally got to my daughter's school. She was 7 at the time and in tears. She thought I'd been killed in the bay bridge when it collapsed. It was a double decker bridge which was later replaced with single deck bridges. It was quite shocking to see that there was no damage to my house. I even had power. My house was on a hill overlooking the flat lands of Oakland and the bay into San Francisco. It was eerily dark. The entire area was pitch black. I couldn't see a light in Oakland or the lights on either bridge (Bay Bridge or Golden Gate) or any lights across the bay into San Francisco. I tried calling family but the phones weren't working (no cellphones). I later found out that all the water in my mother's swimming pool had emptied upwards and then came crashing down. There was construction going on across the street from where I worked. They were putting up the iron beams and they were about 10 stories high. It was like the Hand of God had taken them and twisted them. The beams were misshapen and a total mess. I just thank God my building was on rollers and that it didn't snap in two. It took days for me to recover my vehicle. The loss of life would have been so much worse if it hadn't been for the World Series. The roads at the time of the quake are usually bumper to bumper due to "rush hour" traffic. It was one of the worst experiences of my life.
I’ve lived through many earthquakes here in LA. Some worse than others. There’s been many small ones that aren’t that scary. However, do remember the Northridge Earthquake, which was near me. It was a 6.7. I was almost 4 on Jan 17, 1994.
I grew up in Berkeley, so I lived through this one. I was 8 years old then. We were lucky our home wasn't damaged; the only thing I really remember is all the adults being freaked out, while I was just annoyed the power was out for a long time.
I was living in Santa Cruz, California at the time. There were 2 epicenters. One was in Loma Prietta, the other was in Santa Cruz. They both hit at the same time and traveled up and blended ending in the Bay area. In SC we lost 5 bridges, no electricity or gas stations for about a week. I was a waitress at the time and was working the evening shift. I went to work almost on zero gas and was going to use that nights tips to get some. I was at the restaurant at 5 to get something to eat before work and it hit at 5:04 pm and everything went haywire. My mom was 14 miles away and i was not able to check on her for 3 days. They did not have cell phones back then so everyone was pretty much stuck where they were. One thing though. The store across the street from the place I was at was lined up and everyone was getting beer. I though man I want a clear head and thought that was pretty stupid since they had thousands of aftershocks right afterwords
I used to live in Indiana. I was woken by an earthquake once. I didn't know it was a quake, it was so slight. I just knew I heard snow slide off the roof, and I felt queasy. I learned it was a quake later in the day. At first, I thought the shaking feeling was coming from me and that the snow sliding off the roof was a coincidence.
I remember being home alone at that time. I was 11 yrs old when it happened as well. Just like everyone in the Bay area i was getting ready to watch game 3 of the world series. My bird started to freak out then all of a sudden the tv went off and the ground started shaking. I went outside and saw the water in the apartment complex pool coming out in 3-4 ft waves. The light poles were rocking back n forth and the street had what looked like waves.
I'll never forget seeing the bridge that collapsed on the news. I was only 7 when this happened, but it was probably the first serious earthquake I was aware of. I was in college in VA in 2003/2004 when I experienced my first earthquake. It was surreal - I was standing in my dorm's doorway and suddenly everything was moving around me. Thankfully this it was a small one! Experienced another small one in MD a few years later.
You feel dizzy. I've been through 2 earthquakes in Los Angeles and wildly, a small one in NYC!! My husband was on the couch and I was standing in the bathroom. I felt odd, then saw my washrag moving slightly and then I felt dizzy. Every earthquake occurs on different rock or sediment foundations so people can feel different sensations.
I was 22 at the time coming home from san jose st. to Palo Alto. ~35 mi south of sf. Still well north of epicenter. Anyway, i was on a bus when it hit. Just pulled into a stop. The first jolt felt like a big truck trying to push bus on side walk. Then i could feel giant rolling motion.. Another commenter said they saw gisnt waves in pavement, like being on a choppy ocean. I couldn't agree more! I saw same in parking lot. By far, strongest i everr felt. I remember wondering if id survive. The quake lasted about 15 seconds...seemed a hell of a lot longer. Anyway, only about 5 of us on the bus. All okay. Driver didnt move for about 10 mins. Then we continued on. The worry was driving on an overpass right after. As far as how bad shaking can be. Depends on type and strengh of quake, and duration. What really makes a difference is the type of gound you are on, and how well built the buildings are. I was on bedrock when it hit, so not so bad. But the softer the ground, the greater the damage. Etreme example would be landfill. Areas that used to be under water, but filled in and built upon. Alot of this kind af area around ring of bay. Those area more susceptible to sever damage Liquifaction.. Where the landfill just sinks. btw, the pankaked structure you saw was an elevated freeway on the oaland side of the bay. About a mile of the top freeway collapsed on to bottom. Smashing sveral cars. If i remember ther was no more than 36 inches of space. The majority of deaths happened there. I think 56. There were a few people rescued. Including a man named Buck Helm, who was pulled from wreaksge several days after the quake. A great inspiration to many, a light in the darkness. Unfortunately, he did not survive his wonds. He died a few weeks later. The world series being in san fancisco, with game starting , at that time kept many off the roads in peak rush hour time. Had our local teams not veen in the world series, many many more would have died on that pankaed freeway
Kabir, the feeling is not consistent. I have felt ones that just shake. On another occasion it felt like a wave moving through, and flexing my house. One made the glass lamp shade beside my bed ring like a chime. Never consistent.
I've been in a number of earthquakes while stationed on Guam (next to the Marianas trench) while in the US Navy. I once was waiting for a bus and I had one foot on the ground and the other foot on a wood platform. All of a sudden I noticed both my feet and legs were rotating in different motions. Almost like standing on jelly. While across the street, the store that I had just finished shopping in had every pane of glass along its front shatter and people fleeing out of the store.
I've been to San Fransisco and in one of the museums there they have an earthquake simulator. Obviously you have bars and railings that you can hold onto once the thing starts moving. It's a bit like being on the Tube, if you can imagine the Tube not only lurching from side to side, but also going up and down at the same time! Not bad if you have something to hold onto, but imagine you are walking down the street and that happens! I've been to the States numerous times and I've managed to miss any earthquakes, once, by only a few hours! I arrived in LA once and they had had a 4.5 earlier that day. That's not too bad by California standards, but would have been terrifying for me as a Londoner! :-)
My first earthquake was in Palm Springs. The room was shaking, stuff falling everywhere but the craziest thing was watching the impact on a swimming pool. Pretty big waves coming over the sides of the pool. Lost about half the water
My uncle tell us stories about this he moved out there from the east coast and 1 month later this happened. He was back to Maryland the day after and never went back West 😂
I live in the Bay Area so I've felt quite a few smaller quakes. It feels like rocking back and forth or a rolling sensation. There was a small one a week ago and I heard it before I felt it. My house creaked from one side to the other like a wave. As for Loma Prieta, my dad was at football practice in high school and he said the field literally rolled like a wave in the ocean. When he got home a foot of water was missing from his pool. I've never experienced anything bigger than a 4.0 but we're still waiting on "the Big One."
In 2000 I was living in north end of Seattle. I was sitting in my house on a very nice sunny day when I started feeling the house shake. It took about 5 seconds for it to sink in it was an earthquake. I ran out the back door into my back yard. The ground was "rolling" in huge waves from the south to the north. These waves were about 2 feet tall and about 20 feet wide. I was thinking I was going to watch my house be destroyed.. Trees were waving and the clothesline in a neighbors yard was bouncing wildly. After what seemed like hours, (a minute maybe) the shaking stopped. My earliest memory of an earthquake was in 1949 and I was 4 years old and we were hit by a 7.1 quake and the house shook and Mom was holding me in the archway of a door. I remember seeing the dishes in the sink being tossed about, (Mom had been baking).
I live in Southern California and while we were not affected, it was a big deal. You should react to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in Los Angeles. That one struck in the middle of the night and it caused a lot of damage in the area.
October 17th, 1989 is a day I will never forget. I was working the graveyard shift at that time, so I was in bed sleeping when the quake hit. I struggled to even get out of the bed. Everything was shaking so hard. I have been through many Earthquakes before, but nothing of this level. I was so scared. I no longer live in the Bay Area. I traded Earthquakes for Hurricanes...haha.
I'll never forget this moment. I was at my grandparent's house 4,800 km away in NJ, about to watch the game when the TV screen started shaking. The broadcast went out and switched to breaking news. When I saw that partial bridge collapse, I developed an intense fear of bridges (I was 11yo), which made our frequent trips to NYC across the George Washington Bridge extremely traumatizing.
SC resident here. Back then, I was 2 months shy of being 8yrs old. Still can vividly remember the news coverage and the subsequent tv movie a year later.
I felt the east coast earthquake from like 10 years ago. I was in an office building, but all of a sudden it felt like the floor was rolling, like kind of a pulsing or waves of vibration. No one knew what it was. We thought maybe some kind of explosion or mishap in the parking garage beneath the building, but after like 10 seconds it was gone and we forgot about it until it was on the news later that evening.
I was in the 1989 Earthquake. I had just sat down in my seat at Game 3 of the World Series. I was mad they weren't playing. After 45 minutes of waiting, I caught the bus home and pick up the empty bucket that fell off the shelf. Three days later of no electricity sent me to Fremont.
I was in downtown San Francisco on the afternoon in 1989, running late, rushing to get home after work for one of my favorites TV shows in less than an hour. I was headed down the stairs into the MUNI (Municipal Railway, called MTA today)Metro station. My head was at about street level when I began having trouble walking a straight line. It took me several seconds to figure out why. Needless to say the MUNI system was shut down. It took me over an hour to find a payphone to call home. Mind you, this was before the days of VCRs and cell phones. And this just happened to be one of those days that no one was home. It was pitch dark by the time my dad could pick me up, with the streetlights being out. I was never scared of the quake, just mad that I couldn't get home in time for the Von Erichs. (The electricity was out anyway.) Many parts of downtown SF are on landfill, what used to be parts of the Bay itself. When the earth gets a-shaking, these sections basically turn to Jell-o. It doesn't help that a lot of the businesses and apartment buildings in these area are built with the ground floor strictly for parking and the heavy-load bearing walls of the living areas starting one floor up. A lot of people in second floor apartments (first floor for you Brits) suddenly found themselves able to step out their windows right onto the sidewalks. I lived near the southwest corner of the City, close to the Daly City line. Our house is on bedrock and other than 3 days of no electricity, only a few minor, already damaged parts of the house got affected.
I was sitting at my desk at work when it hit. I stood up to steady the laser printer that was bouncing when the bookcase started to tip over. So I rode out the quake, standing and bouncing up and down, but steadying myself with one hand on the laser printer and the other hand on the bookcase. My dad's house in the Santa Cruz mountains survived that earthquake with damage that we soon repaired, but that same house was destroyed a few years ago in a wild fire caused by a lightning storm from hell. There isn't enough money in the world to prepare for everything and living in fear isn't living.
Every earthquake I have felt, has been different. In the Northridge quake of 1994, it woke us up, and at first felt like a truck had slammed into our house, but it just kept going. It was a very violent shake. In an earlier quake, I think Landers 1992?... I was young, hard to remember. It felt more like a roll of the ground under you than the violence of the Northridge one.
I lived in an earthquake prone area years ago - the Neponset River Valley in Massachusetts. Apparently, my old apartment was very close to a fault line. The earthquakes were very small (most registered as a 1 point something on the Richter scale) and were not very noticeable. Most happened at night. One night, we had one that was, I believe, a 2.6. It was very early in the morning and woke me up. I thought i heard a bang or crunch (I'm pretty sure I have Exploding Head Syndrome, which us a weird but real thing, so it's not odd for me to hear noises like that) but this woke me up because it wasn't like the usual noises I heard. I wondered if someone were trying to break into my apartment, but all I heard were car alarms going off outside. I learned about the earthquake later in the morning. It made sense to me.
I was in the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Jose, down at the bottom of the bay, but directly even with Loma Prieta. The light standard was doing a several foot arc, with the light out of phase. I had to help my landlady clean up her collection of depression glass. Most of the damage was well away from the epicenter, with the Cypress Freeway collapse, the Marina district in SF, and Santa Cruz.
A few years back Reno, NV. went threw a swarm where we had over 20 in one week. Pretty trippy when you live in an area not known for quakes. The most memorable one for me was the one I heard coming closer. Started as a low rumble that got louder and louder then BAM!!!! you felt it.
It didn't start out very big, just a slight tremor. Not unlike a lot of minor earthquakes before which we usually ignore out here. Then it just kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger. By the time I realized it was a major earthquake, it was too late to get under a table or other sheltered place.
I was working in a town due east of San Francisco. The pavement looked like a wave from one side of the parking lot to the other. You run outside away from any structure that can crush you.
Hey Kabir great reaction. I was 12 years old when this earthquake hit. I remember it like it was yesterday, I was at my middle school with my Volleyball team and we were just finishing up a practice Volleyball game against one of the other middle school teams. I had gone to the office to call my parents to come pick me up when things in the office started to sway and the lights were flickering I was escorted out quickly by the Principal and told to hold onto the pole in the front. I was holding on for dear life wrapped around it feeling like I was on a roller coaster because it felt like a rolling feeling. I could hear people screaming from the Volleyball teams to the Cheerleaders who were practicing on the front grass of the school. Once it was over and I was able to be picked up my mom told me that she remembers seeing some of the neighborhood kids sitting out on the grass thinking it was cool, while everyone else was trying to stay calm and safe. In our apartment the counter tops had separated from the walls and we had cracks in the ceiling. At the time I was living in Hollister, CA (about 1 hr 30 mins South from San Francisco) and the city sits on both the Calaveras fault and the San Andreas fault so we felt the shock waves from both the North and South from the Loma Prieta that came from the Santa Cruz Mountains. In our small downtown area we have a Masonic Temple Clock Tower and when the 6.9 earthquake hit that clock tower froze with the time 5:04 p.m. which is when the earthquake hit our town. Even though we didn't have any casualties we had several homes and businesses that were destroyed which was about $100 million dollars in damages. Unlike a Tornado where you have a better chance of receiving a warning, an earthquake doesn't give away anything it just hits out of nowhere. It can start off as a small shake and then every second it can increase to a devastating magnitude or just stay small. Looking forward to many more reactions, keep up the amazing job!
I was in that quake. Growing ip in the Bay Area I always thought quakes were fun. It all changed that day. We were excited about the Bay Bridge World Series and I was with a few of my sisters watching the pre- game show. First the tv went to snow. Then the shaking started slowly, next the tv turned off. The lights went out, all with in a few seconds. At first the quake rolled, then we could here loud roaring from the ground. The movement changed to violent bouncing . The wood floor model TV my parents had weighed a ton. However it was bouncing up and down like a basketball. The sliding glass doors began to wave, yeah thats right WAVE. Open doors slammed shut and the building made loud popping sounds. Food and dishes came flying out of the cabinets. I started screaming at the earth to stop. Dogs out side were whaling. The kids were frozen in place. Many dogs and cat had run away a few days before the quake. So many crazy thing happened and we were almost 100 miles from the epicenter. In the months that followed, we had hundreds of aftershocks both real and imaginary. Every time I lay down for many months, I felt shaking. It took a long time to get over that earthquake emotionally, and I don’t think I totally have ever gotten over it.
I was living in the East Bay when it happened. My dad got us tickets to games 2 and 4, I’m glad we didn’t have tickets for game 3. There’s really no warning before an earthquake. I was walking across my room and next thing I know I’m thrown to the ground. I jumped up and stood in my doorway to ride it out. I could see our pool and the the water was making waves that were splashing 4-6 feet up and out of each end. Earthquakes generally move side to side or have a rolling effect. If you live here long enough you get to know what we call earthquake weather. It’s an eerie feeling. It’s not a guarantee that one is going to happen but you pay more attention to your surroundings and look at the safest place to be near you. If you see birds flocking in a weird fashion around trees or your dog starts shaking get ready for a ride.
There are two types of earthquake "shaking" and one (the jolt type) feels like someone dropping something heavy on the ground (Think of like a construction demo site and a big piece of concrete falling). The other type of earthquake (the rolling type) feels like being on a boat (think about your reaction videos of boats going over those massive waves) The bigger the earthquake the bigger the wave.
I remember the Loma Prieta earthquake quite well. I was in my office in Emeryville (across the bay from San Francisco) getting ready to go home to watch the World Series when it hit. Fortunately, I was in a modern building that was designed to withstand big quakes. Another fortunate thing is that Candlestick Park, where the game was about to be played, had been retrofitted to bring it up to modern standards only a couple of years before the quake happened. When the quake was over, I left the building and went out to my car to drive home. The first thing I noticed was a column of smoke rising from nearby Berkeley. This was pretty scary. Everyone who's lived in the Bay Area for any length of time knows that the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake did more damage than the quake itself. The fire in Berkeley was at a mechanics' shop, and the Berkeley Fire Department got it out pretty quickly. I got in my car and turned on the radio to get some news. There were no radio stations on the air. I searched all of the AM and FM frequencies and found nothing. The quake had knocked them all out. I decided to stay off the freeways while driving home, because the overpasses might have been damaged. As I drove home, I encountered many intersections where the stop lights were out. Ordinary citizens were at these intersections directing traffic. Many people are helpful and selfless during a crisis. I had set up my VCR to record the game. When I got home, I found that I'd never lost power. Instead of the game, I got the early news reports of the quake on tape. I still have the tape, though I have no way of playing it now. I should really transfer it to a digital medium. That structure at the beginning of the video you described as "janky" was the Cypress Freeway. It was a double-decker freeway in Oakland that collapsed. Many of the deaths were people in cars on the lower deck that were crushed when the upper deck fell onto it. The Cypress was the first elevated freeway built in California, and even before Loma Prieta you could tell something was wrong with it. The roadbed sagged between the pillars, and it felt like a carnival ride when you drove over it because of all the ups and downs. Standards have been greatly improved since the Cypress was built, and they no longer make double-decker freeways. One thing that should have gotten more attention is the response of the people who lived near the Cypress. Some of them climbed into the wreckage to rescue the people who were trapped inside. They had to know how dangerous this was when they did it, especially since all big earthquakes have aftershocks. I learned from this experience that initial reports of disasters are often inaccurate or misleading. The national news gave the impression that the entire Bay Area had been destroyed. There was a lot of damage, and 63 people were killed, but it wasn't as bad as they made it look. The local news reports were better. Ever since then, I've taken early news reports of big emergencies with a grain of salt.
There are different types of quakes, but most common are tremors which can be really weird to experience, too. I’ve been through tremors that rattle the walls and shake the pictures hanging on them, or rattle the glasses in a cabinet, some can feel like a swaying, and I experienced one as a kid before school started, some of us were in a classroom and it felt like somebody shoved the back half of a row of desks hard against the back of me (I was sitting in a middle desk). I turned around, about to be pissed at somebody but nobody was there. The other kids in the room were like “oh my god, that’s an earthquake!” That is a big reason I wouldn’t move to California, because feeling things like that can really weird you out.
I was in college in the East Bay Area during the 1989 quake, in a classroom on the second floor of an old brick building. The hanging fluorescent lights started swinging back and forth and at first we were all looking at each other in confusion. Then we got on the floor and stuck our heads under the very small desks we were sitting at, they were only big enough to cover our heads. Our bodies were exposed. As soon as the shaking stopped, we quickly left the building because we had no idea if that was just the beginning. Next everyone milled around trying to find pay phones to call loved ones. (No cell phones back then.) The lines at the phones were long because no one wanted to enter the buildings again. I think the hardest thing for me was the next couple of years. Every time I was in traffic, stopped under an overpass, I would feel a real panic. I couldn't breathe again until I was free and clear of the overhead tons of concrete. The images of those who were pancaked between the collapsed double decker freeway really left it's mark on me. I had driven that freeway so many times before. When it was rebuilt, they didn't put one on top of the other again. They are now side by side.
I live up near Seattle and I am 39. I have been through 4 earthquakes here. You asked how it feels, it feels like a carnival ride you can’t get off of. Some shake side to side and some are rolling earthquakes. I literally watched the Puget sound roll including the bridge I was staring at from the bluffs we lived on. Another time I was on the waterfront in downtown Seattle on the pier working at the aquarium gift shop and all the shot glasses were breaking as the shelves shook I ran to get off the water but the viaduct (a double stacked old highway like the one in San Francisco) was throwing off chunks of cement. So really no safe place to stand. Super scary.
Oh wow! This was the quake of my generation. I was 26 living in Oakland and had my 4 month old baby boy with my mom at home. She also had two school age grandsons with her. I was working in nearby Emeryville on the swing shift at a music box company. I was going to go to downtown Oakland to pick up my dinner so I could watch my A's whoop the Giants on tv. My boss had dinner delivered so we could stay put. Had I gone to Oakland, I would've been on the Cypress section of the freeway that completely collapsed. During the quake, we thought it was a train going past the offices. Nope. It was a little shaking then boom, rock and roll. Knocked my on my butt and I crawled under a desk until the shake/roll stopped. All the music boxes were falling off the shelves. This was before cell phone use, but my pager for Alameda Country Emergency was going off. I had my EMT license and was registered with the county for emergency response. I left work about 15 minutes later and it took me 2 hours to get from Emeryville to East Oakland which is about 11 miles. All the freeway entrances were blocked and surface streets clogged. Brick facings of buildings were laying on the sidewalks. I big manufacturing building looked like someone just gave it a shove it was sitting lopsided. I checked on my mom. She was panicked because she the baby on the floor in the bedroom, grandson in the backyard and another crying because the shaking knocked him off the toilet. The neighborhood guys, closed off our block and pulled out arms and began patrolling the backyards and walkways because night was falling and no electricity anywhere except the hospitals, fire and police stations. I left to check in at the county hospital to help with triage. Many walking in with chest pains, etc. The first of the rescued persons from the Cypress freeway began to arrive. They were in awful shape. From the roof of the hospital, we could see the fire smoke in the Maria District of San Francisco. Seeing the Bay Area in blackness was crazy. It was about 6am when someone found some TV's and we saw the real damages. My paramedic fiancee' was giving an interview to CBS news about the Cypress freeway. Other medics brought their climbing gear was trying to get to people still alive. It was heartbreaking to know that nothing could be done. The structure was so unstable that any equipment could bring down the double-decker freeway to the ground. The only openings were less than two feet of clearance. A former boyfriend who was a sheriff's deputy, two weeks later had the task of working with the county coroner to remove those bodies from the crushed cars. That really took a toll on him.
Wow, I lived 11 miles from the epicenter in the Santa Cruz Mountians. I was like 14 when it hit, we made it through losing a pot of beans and a few things on shelves, didn't have power for a while and got food and water from the goverment, it was crazy.
I was living and working in SF at the time. We were incredibly lucky the World Series involved both Bay Area teams and that due to television coverage and wanting a prime time start on the East Coast game time was 5pm. Lots of people had left work early that day and fewer people were on the freeways and Bay Bridge as a result. Barely survived a falling piece of masonry myself, meanwhile my boss was on the Bay Bridge just feet away from the panel that fell. Our house was yellow-tagged and my workplace was red-tagged. Every year I drink a toast on October 17th at exactly 5:04 pm and remember those who didn’t make it and thank the universe that I and others did.
My Grandparents were living in the Marina District when Loma Prieta hit. Their building survived intact, but buildings all around them collapsed. I remember flying out from New York to help my mother with taking care of them.
I was in the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake in college, in LA. My roommate & I were still in bed around 7:40am and it started shaking. Books on the bookshelf jetted straight out horizontally then fell. My roommate, a S. California native, started shouting, "This is just a foreshock!', meaning a bigger one was coming. It was big enough at 5.9 & we had many aftershocks. You could tell right away when the car alarms started going off. It's a very primal feeling, like the gods are shaking the Earth under your feet. Been in a few smaller ones later, too. Not fun.
I've experienced a couple of earthquakes in Costa Rica. They have felt like you are standing on a floating platform after a boat went by creating waves. It made me a bit dizzy even.
I remember the highway collapse, seeing it on the news. It has made me terrified of double decker roadways and even being stopped under an overpass my whole life. They talked about that 1906 earthquake - the devastation from that one was massive. And the worst part is, leadership was under such pressure to rebuild everything, to get life back to normal, that the new buildings they put up in a rush were even less suited to withstand earthquakes than the ones they replaced. Money and politics will always rule over safety. I've been through two tiny earthquakes myself. The first one, I was in bed, and it just felt like someone sat down on the corner of the bed and bounced it. The second time I was at work, and it was a stomach dropping lurch and shook stuff around me. We had rolling racks that scooted around a little. No damage from either, but the realization that the earth could simply open under your feet, with no warning, was really a terrifying one.
I was a kid and I remember I heard it before I felt it. It sounded like a loud truck engine was outside my living room window and I felt the shaking a few secs after
In 1812, in Tennessee, the Mississippi River literally ran backward for several hours. Tennessee Emergency Teams spend 90% of their time prepping for the "next one." One TEMA member told me at a meeting, "We are trying to keep Memphis from being dumped into the Mississippi River." WOW!
I live in the Seattle area and the biggest quake I’ve lived through was the 2001 Nisqually Quake. I was in school still then and remember being in computer class when my computer started bouncing on the table. We realized what was going on and got under the tables and I remember being on my hands and knees under the table and feeling the ground moving beneath me. It wasn’t so much a shake as it was a roll, kind of like waves moving past but in very quick succession. Each earthquake is different though. Another time I was asleep in bed very early in the morning and was woken up by the feeling of my bed jolting almost like someone had bumped into it very forcefully and that was it. I was lying in bed half awake and though “I wonder if that was an earthquake” and sure enough when I looked it up the next morning we had had a smaller earthquake in the early morning hours.
I lived in California all my life and experienced earthquakes in the past but they were little and you would call your friend and say hey did you feel that? But I was in a restaurant went the 89 one hit and it literally felt like Godzilla was shaking the building. Everything that wasn't glued down, came down. Including hot glass coffee pots. I got under the table. It lasted about a minute. When it was done I came around the corner and some guy next to the cafe's window dove out of the way seconds before it broke. It was a wall sized window. I looked at my manager with 2 co-workers standing there with all of their mouths dropped open. Unreal experience. I will say that the World Series was a special one with 2 Bay area teams so a lot of people were in some place like a pub or at friends houses watching the game. That fact right there saved countless lives.
It was unbelievable, we were watching the game in North Carolina after having moved from Sacramento in 1985. Looked at each other and thought "not a moment to soon", thank God we moved!
I grew up in southern California, and have experienced a few earthquakes. I live in Utah now, and have seen Faultline Park up near the University of Utah. When I was working we had the Great Shakeout, which was a planned earthquake drill. In school, we always had them. I think the one that I was in 1961 or 1962 was the scariest for me, because we were in an old wooden building. The roof dropped 12 inches or so. We were in a rural area, in which there was a brick building that housed most of the grades, but 5th,7th, and 8th grades were in the older wooden building. The one that happened in 1971 had torn up the gas lines in my parents' house, and they had to have the gas company come in and replace the gas lines because every day enough gas was leaking to fill their dining room. They weren't even near the epicenter, but they felt the quake when it happened.
i was in fairview pa, when the tornado hit albion pa. scary as hell indeed. years later i moved to erie, and was in a basement when the smaller 5+ quake hit here in pennslyvania, i clearly felt the ground just shake like i was standing on a vibrating surface, there was motion in every direction, no discernable left or right, up or down, or side to side, just total vibration, but the thing that scared me the most was the ungodly rumbling sound so forceful it actually shook my insides, and u knew this sound was huge rocks deep underground smashing, twisting and trying to push into each other. It was a sound i'll never forget and never want to hear again! Kudos to those that live in areas like los angels, i for one would leave irrespective of cost, i never felt so absolutely insignificant as i did to this power of mother nature, no matter what u do u cannot beat plate tectonics - it makes and breaks entire continents - think of that for a moment
6 years or so ago before i retired, we were building the Stanford hospital, and it was built on a bunch of 8 ft round rubber pads so the whole building would or could shift 3 foot in any direction.
My sister and i were watching the World Series. I was only 7 years old and watched what was happening. I've only felt the Mineral, VA earthquake that rocked the east coast.
No time to prepare... I was sitting out on the lawn when the earthquake struck. The ground below me felt like soft jello with no substance at all. The buildings around me swayed but it was the inconstancy of the earth beneath me that has stayed with me the most. During the 1989 earthquake, I was an hour north of SF in my home built on the second level in a flood area and all I remember was one of my roommates fighting with me for my doorway. I went to work expecting to see our warehouse in shambles but was surprised to see everything standing fine. One smaller one I looked up and saw the chandelier over the dining room table swaying and rushed out to see the water in the pool sloshing up and out of the pool.
i remember this day vividly, i lived 86 miles northeast if the epicenter. i watched the fireplace sway. after seeing the bay bridge & cypress freeway collapse, i still have a slight phobia whenever I'm in slow moving traffic that stalls me inside of the caldecot tunnel, underneath an overpass, or on any bridge. yet i find it hard to imagine living anywhere else. in the past few weeks there have been several magnitude 3.5ish or smaller quakes. growing up here it becomes a part of everyday life & you just have to prepare for the worst but pray for the best🤷🏾♀️
I live in Marin , the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. I did experiences the Loma Prieta . It felt like the floors dropping and shifting up at the same time. Marin literally is split up. We don’t get earthquake’s, we get tectonic shifts. Very scary earthquake. Thank you for you great show. Cheers🎉
I live in washington state away from the tsunami zone but there is fears that a massive earthquake would cause mt rainier to have a massive mudslide which destroy my home town
You are seeing all this about the west coast. The largest quake in American history was the New Madrid quake. That is the central Mississippi valley. It was felt all the way to Boston, Massachusetts
@@douglassellers7528 I live in Central Arkansas about an hour away from Little Rock and I do worry about the New Madrid because this area of the country is in no way prepared for something like that.
I was in Fremont, Ca when this happened. You could see the ground roll. All the freeways shut down. The section of 880 that collasped wasn't too far away. I was 18.
I was at work during the big Nisqually Quake in February 28, 2001. I was in a small glass office inside of a huge warehouse designing embellishments for clothing. I heard and felt a large jarring and bumping. I assumed it was the large generator above my office. Suddenly, the room felt like it was rolling. I felt dizzy and looked over my shoulder to see stacks of clothing falling from very high shelves along the warehouse wall. I also saw the workers outside of my office running in a panic. I staggered to the door as the floor rolled and swayed, opened the door and yelled for the assembly workers to get under their tables, but no one listened. I stayed under the reinforced doorway and got an adrenalin rush and started hooting.😂 I guess I decided that I might as well enjoy the feeling of awe I had watching mother nature kick the crap out of us. It stopped and we were really lucky none of the giant lights fell on anyone. That was quite a ride. Then, of course, 7 months later, 9-11 happened. That was also surreal.
I was 10 and at my friend's place in San Jose, to watch the game, when it stuck. They all ran for cover and I just stayed on the couch and rode it out, I didn't even think about it, but they had a huge entertainment system that could have crushed me had it fallen forward. And just over a few years later I was visiting my dad in Palm Springs when the Northridge quake hit the LA area, they seem to follow me.
I'm in southern Wisconsin and I was at work listening to that baseball game when word came of the earthquake. I told the guy sitting next to me and he thought it was kind of funny until we learned just how bad it was. As for being in an earthquake, maybe about 20 years ago I had just gone to bed and was listening to a news station out of Chicago on my radio. Suddenly my bedroom shook and I heard a rumbling coming from somewhere. It only lasted a few seconds and I wasn't sure what happened. Neither of the two cats we had at the time were with me so I don't know how they reacted. A few minutes later there was a report on the radio that said it was an earthquake. I don't remember how strong it was but we didn't even have anything fall off a shelf. My late Mom and my Dad were both asleep and didn't feel or hear a thing.
Two weeks before the Loma Prieta earthquake I was in England. When my plane lifted off the tarmac at San Francisco airport, I remember thinking "what if an earthquake struck at this very moment? I wouldn't feel it, and I wouldn't know it happened until I got to London." There had been rumblings (no pun intended) for weeks, maybe a few months, prior to the earthquake that something was in the air. So it had been on my mind even as I left for my trip. While in a cafe in a small town somewhere in the UK, I asked a couple at the table next to me if they had heard anything on the news about an earthquake in California, as I had had no access to the news since arriving overseas. They told me they'd not heard anything. Two weeks after coming home to San Jose, the earthquake struck. I was at work (it was just after 5 pm), working at a college campus, and dove under my desk as books came tumbling off the bookcases around me. People came from nearby classrooms to our office begging to use the phone to call loved ones. One lady was in so much shock she was convinced I was being mean to her when I said she couldn't use the phone; she kept offering to pay more money to get me to "relent," and couldn't be made to understand the phones simply no longer worked. No power, no utilities, spotty phone service for many days afterward. I was able to find out that my brother, who lived in San Francisco at the time, was OK, thanks to a brief blip in phone service that was short lived; it cut us off after about 60 seconds. I've often wondered if the couple in England I asked about earthquake news remembered me once the story was headline news. They must have thought I was a prophet!
One of my sisters worked in Oakland at that time and normally took the 880 freeway to and from work. She would have been on the 880 if she hadn’t noticed no one had cleaned the coffee maker at the end of the day and stopped to do that. I was watching the World Series game and was very worried until she was able to call my parents who in turn called me and my other sister. One thing that came out of the Northridge earthquake was gas shut off valves. When an earthquake 3.5 or stronger on the Richter scale, it shuts off the natural gas into your house. I have one on my house and so do my neighbors. A lot of damage has been done by fires from gas lines into buildings breaking and resulting in fires. At this time there is no way to predict an earthquake. Currently the west coast has Shake Alert, which is an alert system that gives you a few seconds to get under something sturdy and stable. Here in Washington State we’re encouraged to have earthquake kits, water, food, first aid kit, and something to you warm and dry if necessary, like an emergency blanket. We had a strong earthquake in the Seattle area in February of 2001.
I lived there at the time. It was very scarry. A section of the Oakland San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Grove Shaftner Freeway in Berkley had a section of it collapsed. I was terrified. There was so much damage it was unreal. We had above ground electric poles. The poles and wires were swaying back and forth very badly. Love your reaction!
I was on the Golden Gate Bridge bringing my Dad his World Series Tickets that he had left at home. The traffic was bad so I was stopped. All of the sudden the whole city started swaying back and forth and I realized it wasn't the city swaying. It was the bridge. I weaved in and out of the lanes trying to get off the bridge quickly. Once I got off, I couldn't get off at the exit to go to my stepmother's apartment so I turned towards the Marina. All the power went off, so there were no stoplights. It was chaos and then suddenly a building burst into flames and started to come down towards me so I sped up, driving on the sidewalks at times. About 10 minutes after the earthquake, people started acting like traffic cops since the lights were still off. It usually took 20 minutes to get to my stepmother's apartment, that day it took 2 hours. When I got there my Dad was so happy to see me and I said, "I'm never bringing you anything you leave at home again." The power was off all night, everyone gathered on the roofs of their buildings and shared food, some bbq'd and others drank. We watched the fires around the city and waited for dawn. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life. I didn't find out until later that my boyfriend's father had been killed on the freeway that collapsed. An earthquake feels like you're surfing a wave that also shakes you back and forth. The Golden Gate Bridge is designed to sway so it was the safest place to be and I'm lucky I was on it.
Im from the LA Harbor area, so usually the major earthquakes werent really that big of a deal. They're up north, or in the desert. All we get was a little shaking or like a wave under your feet. Nothing bad, and actually kind of fun. They only last for a few seconds or so. No biggie. This one was barely felt in LA. But.. in the early 1990s was the Northridge quake. That changed everything for us Los Angelino's. It started out bad right from the rip. Just when you thought it was going to stop, it got worse. Then you hear a girl screaming and realize its you. You're safest in the hallway bathroom doorway, if your house or flat has one. The central structure of the building is where you want to be. Doorways are strong. Stay away from the kitchen, and DONT go outside!! Powerlines coming down, debris from buildings falling, the ground opening up, etc... There is an earthquake warning system. First, you might notice an abundance of ants on the ground (if you're outside). Second, you'll hear every dog in the neighborhood barking. Third, car alarms start going off. This all happens in about 3 seconds. Barely enough time to get to "safety".
It’s a creepy feeling when the solid ground no longer feels solid. It can make you feel nauseous. Can’t steady yourself because everything is moving. It’s a surreal feeling. I worked for a while in Las Vegas and the office building I was in has those shock absorbers on its base to damping the shaking of the structure. You could still feel the quake being on the second floor. Was only a 4.
I lived in San Francisco in 89. i was a sophomore in high school. the earthquake experience for me was like this: At home watching Roseanne on TV. We hear what sounds like a freight train coming right towards our house. Theres an initial *JUMP* it feels like something has hit the house, but then a sideways motion begins. This is like standing on a table that your friends are jostling around. they last about 15 seconds. some thigs will fall from shelves. This is HARMLESS unless youre hit by something. At about 20 seconds come the secondary ground waves. its like standing on a boat in medium seas. If you have a long enough line of sight along the ground, you can actually SEE these waves. Hold on to something or sit down because you WILL fall at anything above a 4 on the Richter scale. These are the waves/shakes that are destructive and can last for as long as they damn well please! seconds to literal minutes. **At this point we had left the house after the book shelves had emptied themselves. The swimming pool have begun to slosh. the waves in the pool would become extreme enough to empty half of it into the backyard and the living room. this is an IN GROUND pool** this is when you notice the thick smell of gas in the air. checking all the houses in the area, we found 2 including my own, had ruptured their inbound city gas line. fortunately it was easy enough to just shut them off. no power or gas for a few weeks. but also no school ;) anyways, yeah thats how we celebrated the end of the 80s. You do anything fun? ;)
I was scared by only one earthquake, an aftershock of the Whittier Narrows quake in 1987. It was around 3:00 a.m., and I was asleep in a four-poster bed in the second story of a two-story house. Nearly shook me out of the bed. .
Recently in northern California, we had a measly 3.5 quake while at the dinner table. We were mid conversation, and my mom suddenly said, "Earthquake!" Three or four seconds later the movement started. We just sat there looking around, letting the rumbles happen. Only lasted about 15 seconds or so, and then a few seconds of aftershocks. I asked my mom, "How'd you know?" She said she heard the very low rumble of other homes shifting around to our east. That's about the most warning you can expect - basically none. A small one like that (2 to 4 magnitude) feels similar to the movement of a car on a bumpy gravel road, except that rather than getting moved up-and-down, you're mostly getting moved side-to-side.
One baseball game probably saved hundreds of lives that day. Oakland and San Franscisco were playing in the World Series, the two local teams in the Bay area. That is a very rare occurrence, and therefore many people were inside for the start of the game, in the well-constructed stadium or had left work early, etc. If there were no game, that bridge and freeway would have been packed with rush hour traffic.
This is definitely true! My dad had come home early from work to watch the game, although my mom was on the road (coming home from the grocery store & said it felt like she had a flat tire). There was virtually no rush hour traffic that day.
The fact the stadium was build on solid bedrock also helped, the waves were unable to do much to anything built on it.
I was 22 years old and lived in San Jose, 50 miles south of San Francisco and close to the epicenter of the quake. When it started we ran outside to the front yard. I looked down the street and the road was literally moving up and down about 10 feet like waves in the ocean 🌊.
Me too. It was horrific.
I remember this so clearly, even though I was only 11 when it happened. Kabir, you really have no notice as to when an earthquake is going to happen. I grew up in Southern California and have felt and lived thru countless earthquakes both big and small. That’s what makes them so dangerous and scary. You don’t know when they’re going to occur or where. They do have drills, duck and cover. They used to tell you to get in a door way because that’s a strong point of a building if you’re inside, but now they tell you to get under something sturdy such as a desk or table. The only thing I can say is that I do remember before each earthquake is that the dogs in the neighborhood and our own would start barking like crazy and getting anxious. Animals can sense it.
I was 13 and lived in Kansas and remember this. I remember thinking I’m so glad I had to deal with tornadoes and not earthquakes! That shit looked so scary just watching it on the news!
Doorways are only secure in thick-walled Adobe homes. If you look at houses destroyed by earthquakes, the doors are crushed, too. A sturdy hardwood table is your best bet indoors.
They are certainly sudden, unpredictable, and potentially very dangerous, but I don't consider them scary. I was also born and raised in southern California, and I've always found earthquakes below a magnitude 5.0 to be a nice surprise, and rather enjoyable. It is only when they get above magnitude 5.0 that they become a concern. Now that I live in south-central Alaska, I experience a magnitude 5.0 earthquake on average once per month.
We also have a lot of dog teams in Alaska, but none of them have ever detected an earthquake before it occurred, and we average 47,500 earthquakes per year.
The first warning you have of an earthquake is typically when the room that you are in begins to move.
Though, having said that, I was once camping in the desert and I felt a slight vibration and then heard a rumble, as the main shock approached, and then traveled past us.
That was the oddest earthquake I've ever experienced, and I've felt probably dozens in my lifetime.
The rattling of windows and especially sliding glass doors is our usual notice.
Was living in San Jose when this happened. I distinctly recall watching our hardwood floors rolling like waves on the ocean. Literally. To date, it's the most terrifying experience I've lived through (and I've been shot at). Our power was out for 5 days, and the aftershocks continued for weeks after.
Seeing footage of this when it happened was really scary - I was only 9 years old, and had tons of relatives in California. I remember having a ton of anxiety hoping they were all ok and waiting 'til my Mom got word from them that they were.
Years later as an adult, I watched documentaries and TV footage of the quake, and it was said that if that game had not been going on when the quake started, SO many more people would've been on the roads and at their homes or work places. Hundreds more could've been hurt or killed, but they were relatively safe at the baseball stadium. 🙂
I grew up in the Portland area in the Pacific Northwest. What they said about it being more dangerous a threat up in Washington and Oregon for a devastating earthquake is absolutely true, and it's not just that what frightens people around here. We are located within three different mountain ranges, most notably the Cascades, that of which huge quakes could trigger any number of those mountains to erupt. There's 8 in the PNW - 5 in Washington, 3 in Oregon. Only one of those has erupted in my lifetime - Mt St Helens, and that was over 40 years ago. We're very overdue for a quake in this area; a couple hundred years overdue.
I'm a baseball fan. I was watching the 1989 World Series between the two Bay Area teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. It happened just as Game 3 was about to start. The screen went dark. When it came back the police had driven onto the field and were telling the fans in the upper deck to evacuate.
Al Michaels says “we’re having an eart….” And then static. I couldn’t believe why I thought I heard
If it hadn’t been for that cross-bay World Series it’s very likely that many more people would have died. Because of the game many people had left work early so they could watch the game at home or at the local sports bar. Traffic on the freeways that collapsed was much lighter than normal.
I was also watching the game from Reseda, CA, at the time. Thankfully, I had moved to Alaska in 1991 so I missed out on the magnitude 6.7 quake that hit Northridge in 1994.
@@AlaskanGlitch but you move from California that had a 6.7 to Alaska that has earthquakes that range between 8-9. Talk about going from the frying pan into the fire.
@@pjschmid2251 : That isn't even counting the two volcanic eruptions that covered my home in ash since 1991. I still wouldn't live anywhere else.
I was in it and was working on a high rise and had just gotten off work. the building i was working on was about 3 blocks away from where the freeway collapsed, and they took heave equipment from our site to look for anyone still alive. I was across the bay when it actually happened, and that was the first quake that was big enough to have to hang on to my car to keep upright. Im always amazed at how much roads flex, because the road looked like it was wave of water going up and down, but never broke apart.
A moment you're never going to forget! I'm glad you weren't injured.
I grew up in SoCal and my first earthquake was the Sylmar Earthquake in 1971. It was a 6.5 that lasted for over 10 seconds (a lot longer than it sounds), and I remember waking up to my bed shaking its way across the floor. This was the earthquake that started the retrofitting process because it was absolutely devastating. A big earthquake starts like someone trying to yank the ground out from under you. Little earthquakes (which is what the vast majority of earthquakes are) just give you that vibrating feeling you get in your feet when you're standing by the side of the road and a great big truck goes by.
I lived about 200 miles east of San Francisco and it took a few seconds to get to us. It was still strong enough to slosh the water out of the pool at our apartment. The fact that more were not killed is a miracle since it hit right at 5pm when the highways were full of commuters leaving work.
Also if you want to see another big quake, search for the Northridge Quake in 1994. That one scared the 💩out of me. How do they feel? They’re all different. Some are scary, others you’re like “Oh an earthquake” because you get so used to them. Some are rolling, others feel like they’re swaying, some are really jerky or jolting, others shake. Some last only a few seconds, others last a lot longer. Some you barely even notice.
This one was really bad. I lived in the Area near Gardena and it was rough as far south as we were. My boyfriend ( now my husband) lived further north , just north of LAX and all of his dishes came out of his cabinet and his refrigerator moved across the kitchen. It was scary.
@@gailw415 I lived between Corona and Lake Elsinore and I remember jolting awake and thinking oh just an earthquake go back to sleep and then it got so strong that stuff was flying off of my shelves and I jumped out of bed and got in the doorway. It seemed like no matter where you were within that radius it was bad. And it was long. Felt like that thing went on forever.
I lived in Orange County at the time and it was rough even there. My Aunt lived close to the epicenter and Mom and I drove to help her because she was so scared. We were terrified of every overpass we had to drive under.
When I lived in Southern California there was always the fear of “The Big One” and we wondered at first if Northridge was it. When we found out it wasn’t I was even more afraid of what that predicted massive earthquake would do. I always called my family in Texas immediately because after about half an hour all phone lines would be overwhelmed and go down and I didn’t want them worrying over me. This was before cell phones and internet. The first injuries that usually get called in are heart attacks from people getting so scared.
A former (college) girlfriend lived there with her (then, and now) husband. She said that the quake "literally threw us out of our bed !"
I was living in San Francisco when this happened. I have vivid memories of that day & i will never forget it.
This earthquake happened during rush hour. People were rushing to get home from work. However, it could have been worse. Having the World Series in San Francisco helped keep a lot of people off the road, because they were either at home watching the game, or at the stadium in the stands watching the game in person. So as bad as it was, it honestly could've been worse.
I heard about that. Thank God for that!
That's right. On most work days at that hour, the Cypress Freeway was wall-to-wall traffic, but on that day the traffic was relatively light. Many more people would have died if they hadn't been watching the game somewhere.
I'm in a suburb in Southeast Los Angeles. The big quakes tend to have a rolling/sliding feeling. Smaller quakes shake and kind of feel like air turbulance. I keep a month's worth of canned/dried food and drinking water on hand for eventual "Big One" as we all call it. I also keep a backpack in my car incase I'm out when it happens, got clothes, food, water wind-up radio and flashlight, solar charger for my phone. I'm always surprised at how many friends and neighbours are not prepared/think it won't happen.
I was in Oakland during this. I had just driven through the double decker freeway that collapsed. Known as the Cypress structure. It hit when i got off the freeway 2 exits away.
In 2007 in Southern Maryland I was reclined in a dentist chair with my dentist and his assistant working in my mouth when I thought one of them was lightly shaking the chair. The assistant said to the dentist “did you feel that?”. Then everything started to violently shaking. The earthquake could be felt from Virginia up to Pennsylvania. I never knew the east coast was in a region susceptible to earthquakes. It was foreign to me and most of us.
I'm in Glen Burnie, Maryland. That was five days before Hurricane Irene hit us as well. That was a crazy week!!!
I think I remember hearing about this. Wasn't it like a 5.0 quake?
@Darius Brock I think it was 5.9. The epicenter somewhere in Virginia. It was felt anywhere from Georgia to Canada, all up and down the east coast.
I remember this, I was a kid at the time outside tossing a football around with some friends, it landed in the road and I went to pick it up, I I go to grab it it moved, then I realized the whole road was moving, most fascinating to me was all the parked cars along the street were bouncing like they were driving along in a line hitting potholes and bumps, like one car would bounce a certain way then a moment later the car behind it would bounce the exact same way and that movement went up the line like a wave, it had stopped shaking where I was standing but you could still see cars bobbling around at the end of the street.
"Intraplate" earthquakes happen rarely, mostly on old, mostly-inactive faults, far from plate tectonic boundaries. They are (usually) less severe in magnitude (energy). But in the eastern US, the energy is transmitted much Farther, through truly ancient, crystalline bedrock. The three "great" 1811-1812 quakes in New Madrid, Missouri shook all the way to Washington DC, and Boston.
I live in Oregon and before I bought my current house I checked everything I could including the local bridge retrofits, rock strata, flood potential and landslide possibilities. I have camping gear for four seasons in case my house is uninhabitable, canned and dried food, firewood stashes and medical supplies along with three 5 gallon containers of water that is not potable. I figure the water will be good enough to do laundry with.
I made sure that my house is tied to the foundation and is made of wood for flexibility. I have been through earthquakes in the past. One from 1964 made the ground roll like ocean waves as we were driving down the street, another was a vibrating rumble that made the dog go nuts and yet another was a jerk back and forth when I was sitting on the sofa. You just never know what kind or combination you are going to get.
You have to be prepared for anything. I have two freezers full of food and candy, coffee and cigs to trade for what I don't. If we lose power I have a generator for the freezer with the meat so we don't have to have a giant barbecue for the cul de sac. We are expected to lose power and access to gas for months. This is serious business.
Earthquakes feel like the floor underneath you is a wave in the ocean undulating up and down. Some feel like the floor is moving left and right at the same time. The best analogy that I can think of are those fun houses at the carnivals where the floors move in different ways.
each quake is different. I was in the '71 Sylmar, CA, '89 Loma Prieta & the '94 Northridge quake. Some jolt up. Some are like being on a boat in ocean swells, some shake violently side to side.
Best way I can describe it (I only experienced a small one), imagine your standing on a rug and someone is trying to pull it out from under your feet but there's someone pulling on the other side as well and it's going back and forth.
I live all the way across the country from California but I remember watching the coverage of this as it happened. I remember how horrific it was to see images of the collapsed upper decks of the roadway, and realize that people got crushed in their vehicles. Just awful. It is heartening to know that a lot has been done to help mitigate the impact when it happens again.
At the start when you said, "What was that?", it was a double decker freeway that collapsed, top to bottom crushing the cars on the second level. Had there not been the World Series, which had lots of people home already, hundreds of people would have been caught in that.
I was 300 miles away, just sat down to watch the series when I felt a huge bump. I actually thought my Doberman had bumped into my chair while playing. That's when the game went off and Al Michael's said " We've just had an earth......". I don't remember him finishing that sentence. I started channel hopping until I found a station that was up. I was up all night watching the efforts to stop the fires, rescue people and just to pray. It was horrendous. I've been in bigger quakes, several, but not one with such destruction, except Northridge.
I lived and worked in Oakland. I got stuck in my office, upset because one of my direct reports kept me at my desk and I wanted to pick up my kid from daycare and watch the game. We were on the 16th floor when it hit and I ducked under my desk pulling my coworker with me. Our building was on rockers and tipped from side to side. One employee stood in the middle of the office screaming and another who had been at the copy machine was moving back and forth along with the tilting of the building, the copy machine moving with her. Thank goodness it had a strong plug it it would have gone out the window.
Afterwards, we ran down 16 flights of stairs which had separated from the walls. My car was trapped in the garage. It had been parked on an upper floor and the electricity was out.
I was fortunate enough that one last taxi was outside the building and a bunch of us went for it. We agreed to share. On the way to the home for two of us, we needed to pass under the 880 freeway. Traffic in our direction was stopped to allow cross traffic to go. With no electricity the traffic lights were off. It was taking so long that the two passengers decided it would be faster to walk.
Later when we were allowed to go as we went under the 880, we discovered that our portion was still standing, but the freeway had collapsed on both sides. The cross traffic were cars coming off the on ramp from a part that hadn't yet collapsed. My house was in the opposite direction and the driver had to pass by the BART station. No trains were going anywhere because there was no power. People saw the cab and tried to rush us. The driver said as soon as he got me home, he was going home.
We finally got to my daughter's school. She was 7 at the time and in tears. She thought I'd been killed in the bay bridge when it collapsed. It was a double decker bridge which was later replaced with single deck bridges.
It was quite shocking to see that there was no damage to my house. I even had power. My house was on a hill overlooking the flat lands of Oakland and the bay into San Francisco. It was eerily dark. The entire area was pitch black. I couldn't see a light in Oakland or the lights on either bridge (Bay Bridge or Golden Gate) or any lights across the bay into San Francisco. I tried calling family but the phones weren't working (no cellphones).
I later found out that all the water in my mother's swimming pool had emptied upwards and then came crashing down. There was construction going on across the street from where I worked. They were putting up the iron beams and they were about 10 stories high. It was like the Hand of God had taken them and twisted them. The beams were misshapen and a total mess. I just thank God my building was on rollers and that it didn't snap in two. It took days for me to recover my vehicle.
The loss of life would have been so much worse if it hadn't been for the World Series. The roads at the time of the quake are usually bumper to bumper due to "rush hour" traffic.
It was one of the worst experiences of my life.
I’ve lived through many earthquakes here in LA. Some worse than others. There’s been many small ones that aren’t that scary. However, do remember the Northridge Earthquake, which was near me. It was a 6.7. I was almost 4 on Jan 17, 1994.
I grew up in Berkeley, so I lived through this one. I was 8 years old then. We were lucky our home wasn't damaged; the only thing I really remember is all the adults being freaked out, while I was just annoyed the power was out for a long time.
I was living in Santa Cruz, California at the time. There were 2 epicenters. One was in Loma Prietta, the other was in Santa Cruz. They both hit at the same time and traveled up and blended ending in the Bay area. In SC we lost 5 bridges, no electricity or gas stations for about a week. I was a waitress at the time and was working the evening shift. I went to work almost on zero gas and was going to use that nights tips to get some. I was at the restaurant at 5 to get something to eat before work and it hit at 5:04 pm and everything went haywire. My mom was 14 miles away and i was not able to check on her for 3 days. They did not have cell phones back then so everyone was pretty much stuck where they were. One thing though. The store across the street from the place I was at was lined up and everyone was getting beer. I though man I want a clear head and thought that was pretty stupid since they had thousands of aftershocks right afterwords
I used to live in Indiana. I was woken by an earthquake once. I didn't know it was a quake, it was so slight. I just knew I heard snow slide off the roof, and I felt queasy. I learned it was a quake later in the day. At first, I thought the shaking feeling was coming from me and that the snow sliding off the roof was a coincidence.
I remember being home alone at that time. I was 11 yrs old when it happened as well. Just like everyone in the Bay area i was getting ready to watch game 3 of the world series. My bird started to freak out then all of a sudden the tv went off and the ground started shaking. I went outside and saw the water in the apartment complex pool coming out in 3-4 ft waves. The light poles were rocking back n forth and the street had what looked like waves.
I'll never forget seeing the bridge that collapsed on the news. I was only 7 when this happened, but it was probably the first serious earthquake I was aware of. I was in college in VA in 2003/2004 when I experienced my first earthquake. It was surreal - I was standing in my dorm's doorway and suddenly everything was moving around me. Thankfully this it was a small one! Experienced another small one in MD a few years later.
The ones that happened to me felt like bouncing waves, like being in a small boat.
You feel dizzy. I've been through 2 earthquakes in Los Angeles and wildly, a small one in NYC!! My husband was on the couch and I was standing in the bathroom. I felt odd, then saw my washrag moving slightly and then I felt dizzy. Every earthquake occurs on different rock or sediment foundations so people can feel different sensations.
I was 22 at the time coming home from san jose st. to Palo Alto. ~35 mi south of sf. Still well north of epicenter. Anyway, i was on a bus when it hit. Just pulled into a stop. The first jolt felt like a big truck trying to push bus on side walk. Then i could feel giant rolling motion.. Another commenter said they saw gisnt waves in pavement, like being on a choppy ocean. I couldn't agree more! I saw same in parking lot. By far, strongest i everr felt. I remember wondering if id survive. The quake lasted about 15 seconds...seemed a hell of a lot longer. Anyway, only about 5 of us on the bus. All okay. Driver didnt move for about 10 mins. Then we continued on. The worry was driving on an overpass right after. As far as how bad shaking can be. Depends on type and strengh of quake, and duration. What really makes a difference is the type of gound you are on, and how well built the buildings are. I was on bedrock when it hit, so not so bad. But the softer the ground, the greater the damage. Etreme example would be landfill. Areas that used to be under water, but filled in and built upon. Alot of this kind af area around ring of bay. Those area more susceptible to sever damage Liquifaction.. Where the landfill just sinks. btw, the pankaked structure you saw was an elevated freeway on the oaland side of the bay. About a mile of the top freeway collapsed on to bottom. Smashing sveral cars. If i remember ther was no more than 36 inches of space. The majority of deaths happened there. I think 56. There were a few people rescued. Including a man named Buck Helm, who was pulled from wreaksge several days after the quake. A great inspiration to many, a light in the darkness. Unfortunately, he did not survive his wonds. He died a few weeks later. The world series being in san fancisco, with game starting , at that time kept many off the roads in peak rush hour time. Had our local teams not veen in the world series, many many more would have died on that pankaed freeway
Kabir, the feeling is not consistent. I have felt ones that just shake. On another occasion it felt like a wave moving through, and flexing my house. One made the glass lamp shade beside my bed ring like a chime. Never consistent.
I've been in a number of earthquakes while stationed on Guam (next to the Marianas trench) while in the US Navy. I once was waiting for a bus and I had one foot on the ground and the other foot on a wood platform. All of a sudden I noticed both my feet and legs were rotating in different motions. Almost like standing on jelly. While across the street, the store that I had just finished shopping in had every pane of glass along its front shatter and people fleeing out of the store.
I've been to San Fransisco and in one of the museums there they have an earthquake simulator. Obviously you have bars and railings that you can hold onto once the thing starts moving. It's a bit like being on the Tube, if you can imagine the Tube not only lurching from side to side, but also going up and down at the same time! Not bad if you have something to hold onto, but imagine you are walking down the street and that happens! I've been to the States numerous times and I've managed to miss any earthquakes, once, by only a few hours! I arrived in LA once and they had had a 4.5 earlier that day. That's not too bad by California standards, but would have been terrifying for me as a Londoner! :-)
My first earthquake was in Palm Springs. The room was shaking, stuff falling everywhere but the craziest thing was watching the impact on a swimming pool. Pretty big waves coming over the sides of the pool. Lost about half the water
My uncle tell us stories about this he moved out there from the east coast and 1 month later this happened. He was back to Maryland the day after and never went back West 😂
I live in the Bay Area so I've felt quite a few smaller quakes. It feels like rocking back and forth or a rolling sensation. There was a small one a week ago and I heard it before I felt it. My house creaked from one side to the other like a wave. As for Loma Prieta, my dad was at football practice in high school and he said the field literally rolled like a wave in the ocean. When he got home a foot of water was missing from his pool. I've never experienced anything bigger than a 4.0 but we're still waiting on "the Big One."
You never get notice of an upcoming earthquake. It just happens suddenly, there is no way to prepare.
In 2000 I was living in north end of Seattle. I was sitting in my house on a very nice sunny day when I started feeling the house shake. It took about 5 seconds for it to sink in it was an earthquake. I ran out the back door into my back yard. The ground was "rolling" in huge waves from the south to the north. These waves were about 2 feet tall and about 20 feet wide. I was thinking I was going to watch my house be destroyed.. Trees were waving and the clothesline in a neighbors yard was bouncing wildly. After what seemed like hours, (a minute maybe) the shaking stopped.
My earliest memory of an earthquake was in 1949 and I was 4 years old and we were hit by a 7.1 quake and the house shook and Mom was holding me in the archway of a door. I remember seeing the dishes in the sink being tossed about, (Mom had been baking).
I live in Southern California and while we were not affected, it was a big deal. You should react to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake in Los Angeles. That one struck in the middle of the night and it caused a lot of damage in the area.
October 17th, 1989 is a day I will never forget. I was working the graveyard shift at that time, so I was in bed sleeping when the quake hit. I struggled to even get out of the bed. Everything was shaking so hard. I have been through many Earthquakes before, but nothing of this level. I was so scared. I no longer live in the Bay Area. I traded Earthquakes for Hurricanes...haha.
That's so scary. At least with a hurricane you have time to bolt!
@@reneerollins4433 👍
I'll never forget this moment. I was at my grandparent's house 4,800 km away in NJ, about to watch the game when the TV screen started shaking. The broadcast went out and switched to breaking news. When I saw that partial bridge collapse, I developed an intense fear of bridges (I was 11yo), which made our frequent trips to NYC across the George Washington Bridge extremely traumatizing.
SC resident here. Back then, I was 2 months shy of being 8yrs old. Still can vividly remember the news coverage and the subsequent tv movie a year later.
I felt the east coast earthquake from like 10 years ago. I was in an office building, but all of a sudden it felt like the floor was rolling, like kind of a pulsing or waves of vibration. No one knew what it was. We thought maybe some kind of explosion or mishap in the parking garage beneath the building, but after like 10 seconds it was gone and we forgot about it until it was on the news later that evening.
I was in the 1989 Earthquake. I had just sat down in my seat at Game 3 of the World Series. I was mad they weren't playing. After 45 minutes of waiting, I caught the bus home and pick up the empty bucket that fell off the shelf. Three days later of no electricity sent me to Fremont.
I was in downtown San Francisco on the afternoon in 1989, running late, rushing to get home after work for one of my favorites TV shows in less than an hour. I was headed down the stairs into the MUNI (Municipal Railway, called MTA today)Metro station. My head was at about street level when I began having trouble walking a straight line. It took me several seconds to figure out why. Needless to say the MUNI system was shut down. It took me over an hour to find a payphone to call home. Mind you, this was before the days of VCRs and cell phones. And this just happened to be one of those days that no one was home. It was pitch dark by the time my dad could pick me up, with the streetlights being out. I was never scared of the quake, just mad that I couldn't get home in time for the Von Erichs. (The electricity was out anyway.)
Many parts of downtown SF are on landfill, what used to be parts of the Bay itself. When the earth gets a-shaking, these sections basically turn to Jell-o. It doesn't help that a lot of the businesses and apartment buildings in these area are built with the ground floor strictly for parking and the heavy-load bearing walls of the living areas starting one floor up. A lot of people in second floor apartments (first floor for you Brits) suddenly found themselves able to step out their windows right onto the sidewalks. I lived near the southwest corner of the City, close to the Daly City line. Our house is on bedrock and other than 3 days of no electricity, only a few minor, already damaged parts of the house got affected.
I was sitting at my desk at work when it hit. I stood up to steady the laser printer that was bouncing when the bookcase started to tip over. So I rode out the quake, standing and bouncing up and down, but steadying myself with one hand on the laser printer and the other hand on the bookcase. My dad's house in the Santa Cruz mountains survived that earthquake with damage that we soon repaired, but that same house was destroyed a few years ago in a wild fire caused by a lightning storm from hell. There isn't enough money in the world to prepare for everything and living in fear isn't living.
It was 7.1 on the Richter Scale. Lasted about 45 seconds, no more than 1 minute, Kabir! It's on the San Andrea Fault.
Every earthquake I have felt, has been different. In the Northridge quake of 1994, it woke us up, and at first felt like a truck had slammed into our house, but it just kept going. It was a very violent shake. In an earlier quake, I think Landers 1992?... I was young, hard to remember. It felt more like a roll of the ground under you than the violence of the Northridge one.
I lived in an earthquake prone area years ago - the Neponset River Valley in Massachusetts. Apparently, my old apartment was very close to a fault line. The earthquakes were very small (most registered as a 1 point something on the Richter scale) and were not very noticeable. Most happened at night. One night, we had one that was, I believe, a 2.6. It was very early in the morning and woke me up. I thought i heard a bang or crunch (I'm pretty sure I have Exploding Head Syndrome, which us a weird but real thing, so it's not odd for me to hear noises like that) but this woke me up because it wasn't like the usual noises I heard. I wondered if someone were trying to break into my apartment, but all I heard were car alarms going off outside. I learned about the earthquake later in the morning. It made sense to me.
I was in the Loma Prieta earthquake in San Jose, down at the bottom of the bay, but directly even with Loma Prieta. The light standard was doing a several foot arc, with the light out of phase. I had to help my landlady clean up her collection of depression glass.
Most of the damage was well away from the epicenter, with the Cypress Freeway collapse, the Marina district in SF, and Santa Cruz.
A few years back Reno, NV. went threw a swarm where we had over 20 in one week. Pretty trippy when you live in an area not known for quakes. The most memorable one for me was the one I heard coming closer. Started as a low rumble that got louder and louder then BAM!!!! you felt it.
It didn't start out very big, just a slight tremor. Not unlike a lot of minor earthquakes before which we usually ignore out here. Then it just kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger. By the time I realized it was a major earthquake, it was too late to get under a table or other sheltered place.
I was working in a town due east of San Francisco. The pavement looked like a wave from one side of the parking lot to the other. You run outside away from any structure that can crush you.
Hey Kabir great reaction. I was 12 years old when this earthquake hit. I remember it like it was yesterday, I was at my middle school with my Volleyball team and we were just finishing up a practice Volleyball game against one of the other middle school teams. I had gone to the office to call my parents to come pick me up when things in the office started to sway and the lights were flickering I was escorted out quickly by the Principal and told to hold onto the pole in the front. I was holding on for dear life wrapped around it feeling like I was on a roller coaster because it felt like a rolling feeling. I could hear people screaming from the Volleyball teams to the Cheerleaders who were practicing on the front grass of the school. Once it was over and I was able to be picked up my mom told me that she remembers seeing some of the neighborhood kids sitting out on the grass thinking it was cool, while everyone else was trying to stay calm and safe. In our apartment the counter tops had separated from the walls and we had cracks in the ceiling. At the time I was living in Hollister, CA (about 1 hr 30 mins South from San Francisco) and the city sits on both the Calaveras fault and the San Andreas fault so we felt the shock waves from both the North and South from the Loma Prieta that came from the Santa Cruz Mountains. In our small downtown area we have a Masonic Temple Clock Tower and when the 6.9 earthquake hit that clock tower froze with the time 5:04 p.m. which is when the earthquake hit our town. Even though we didn't have any casualties we had several homes and businesses that were destroyed which was about $100 million dollars in damages. Unlike a Tornado where you have a better chance of receiving a warning, an earthquake doesn't give away anything it just hits out of nowhere. It can start off as a small shake and then every second it can increase to a devastating magnitude or just stay small. Looking forward to many more reactions, keep up the amazing job!
One reason we don't have brick buildings in Cali. The older buildings have to be retrofitted.
I was in that quake. Growing ip in the Bay Area I always thought quakes were fun.
It all changed that day. We were excited about the Bay Bridge World Series and I was with a few of my sisters watching the pre- game show. First the tv went to snow. Then the shaking started slowly, next the tv turned off. The lights went out, all with in a few seconds. At first the quake rolled, then we could here loud roaring from the ground. The movement changed to violent bouncing . The wood floor model TV my parents had weighed a ton. However it was bouncing up and down like a basketball. The sliding glass doors began to wave, yeah thats right WAVE. Open doors slammed shut and the building made loud popping sounds. Food and dishes came flying out of the cabinets. I started screaming at the earth to stop. Dogs out side were whaling. The kids were frozen in place. Many dogs and cat had run away a few days before the quake. So many crazy thing happened and we were almost 100 miles from the epicenter.
In the months that followed, we had hundreds of aftershocks both real and imaginary. Every time I lay down for many months, I felt shaking. It took a long time to get over that earthquake emotionally, and I don’t think I totally have ever gotten over it.
I was living in the East Bay when it happened. My dad got us tickets to games 2 and 4, I’m glad we didn’t have tickets for game 3. There’s really no warning before an earthquake. I was walking across my room and next thing I know I’m thrown to the ground. I jumped up and stood in my doorway to ride it out. I could see our pool and the the water was making waves that were splashing 4-6 feet up and out of each end. Earthquakes generally move side to side or have a rolling effect. If you live here long enough you get to know what we call earthquake weather. It’s an eerie feeling. It’s not a guarantee that one is going to happen but you pay more attention to your surroundings and look at the safest place to be near you. If you see birds flocking in a weird fashion around trees or your dog starts shaking get ready for a ride.
There are two types of earthquake "shaking" and one (the jolt type) feels like someone dropping something heavy on the ground (Think of like a construction demo site and a big piece of concrete falling). The other type of earthquake (the rolling type) feels like being on a boat (think about your reaction videos of boats going over those massive waves) The bigger the earthquake the bigger the wave.
I remember the Loma Prieta earthquake quite well. I was in my office in Emeryville (across the bay from San Francisco) getting ready to go home to watch the World Series when it hit. Fortunately, I was in a modern building that was designed to withstand big quakes. Another fortunate thing is that Candlestick Park, where the game was about to be played, had been retrofitted to bring it up to modern standards only a couple of years before the quake happened.
When the quake was over, I left the building and went out to my car to drive home. The first thing I noticed was a column of smoke rising from nearby Berkeley. This was pretty scary. Everyone who's lived in the Bay Area for any length of time knows that the fire after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake did more damage than the quake itself. The fire in Berkeley was at a mechanics' shop, and the Berkeley Fire Department got it out pretty quickly.
I got in my car and turned on the radio to get some news. There were no radio stations on the air. I searched all of the AM and FM frequencies and found nothing. The quake had knocked them all out.
I decided to stay off the freeways while driving home, because the overpasses might have been damaged. As I drove home, I encountered many intersections where the stop lights were out. Ordinary citizens were at these intersections directing traffic. Many people are helpful and selfless during a crisis.
I had set up my VCR to record the game. When I got home, I found that I'd never lost power. Instead of the game, I got the early news reports of the quake on tape. I still have the tape, though I have no way of playing it now. I should really transfer it to a digital medium.
That structure at the beginning of the video you described as "janky" was the Cypress Freeway. It was a double-decker freeway in Oakland that collapsed. Many of the deaths were people in cars on the lower deck that were crushed when the upper deck fell onto it. The Cypress was the first elevated freeway built in California, and even before Loma Prieta you could tell something was wrong with it. The roadbed sagged between the pillars, and it felt like a carnival ride when you drove over it because of all the ups and downs. Standards have been greatly improved since the Cypress was built, and they no longer make double-decker freeways.
One thing that should have gotten more attention is the response of the people who lived near the Cypress. Some of them climbed into the wreckage to rescue the people who were trapped inside. They had to know how dangerous this was when they did it, especially since all big earthquakes have aftershocks.
I learned from this experience that initial reports of disasters are often inaccurate or misleading. The national news gave the impression that the entire Bay Area had been destroyed. There was a lot of damage, and 63 people were killed, but it wasn't as bad as they made it look. The local news reports were better. Ever since then, I've taken early news reports of big emergencies with a grain of salt.
There are different types of quakes, but most common are tremors which can be really weird to experience, too. I’ve been through tremors that rattle the walls and shake the pictures hanging on them, or rattle the glasses in a cabinet, some can feel like a swaying, and I experienced one as a kid before school started, some of us were in a classroom and it felt like somebody shoved the back half of a row of desks hard against the back of me (I was sitting in a middle desk). I turned around, about to be pissed at somebody but nobody was there. The other kids in the room were like “oh my god, that’s an earthquake!” That is a big reason I wouldn’t move to California, because feeling things like that can really weird you out.
I was in college in the East Bay Area during the 1989 quake, in a classroom on the second floor of an old brick building. The hanging fluorescent lights started swinging back and forth and at first we were all looking at each other in confusion. Then we got on the floor and stuck our heads under the very small desks we were sitting at, they were only big enough to cover our heads. Our bodies were exposed. As soon as the shaking stopped, we quickly left the building because we had no idea if that was just the beginning. Next everyone milled around trying to find pay phones to call loved ones. (No cell phones back then.) The lines at the phones were long because no one wanted to enter the buildings again.
I think the hardest thing for me was the next couple of years. Every time I was in traffic, stopped under an overpass, I would feel a real panic. I couldn't breathe again until I was free and clear of the overhead tons of concrete. The images of those who were pancaked between the collapsed double decker freeway really left it's mark on me. I had driven that freeway so many times before. When it was rebuilt, they didn't put one on top of the other again. They are now side by side.
I remember watching this live on TV. I was nine years old and the images have always stuck with me.
I live up near Seattle and I am 39. I have been through 4 earthquakes here. You asked how it feels, it feels like a carnival ride you can’t get off of. Some shake side to side and some are rolling earthquakes. I literally watched the Puget sound roll including the bridge I was staring at from the bluffs we lived on. Another time I was on the waterfront in downtown Seattle on the pier working at the aquarium gift shop and all the shot glasses were breaking as the shelves shook I ran to get off the water but the viaduct (a double stacked old highway like the one in San Francisco) was throwing off chunks of cement. So really no safe place to stand. Super scary.
Oh wow! This was the quake of my generation. I was 26 living in Oakland and had my 4 month old baby boy with my mom at home. She also had two school age grandsons with her. I was working in nearby Emeryville on the swing shift at a music box company. I was going to go to downtown Oakland to pick up my dinner so I could watch my A's whoop the Giants on tv. My boss had dinner delivered so we could stay put. Had I gone to Oakland, I would've been on the Cypress section of the freeway that completely collapsed. During the quake, we thought it was a train going past the offices. Nope. It was a little shaking then boom, rock and roll. Knocked my on my butt and I crawled under a desk until the shake/roll stopped. All the music boxes were falling off the shelves. This was before cell phone use, but my pager for Alameda Country Emergency was going off. I had my EMT license and was registered with the county for emergency response. I left work about 15 minutes later and it took me 2 hours to get from Emeryville to East Oakland which is about 11 miles. All the freeway entrances were blocked and surface streets clogged. Brick facings of buildings were laying on the sidewalks. I big manufacturing building looked like someone just gave it a shove it was sitting lopsided. I checked on my mom. She was panicked because she the baby on the floor in the bedroom, grandson in the backyard and another crying because the shaking knocked him off the toilet. The neighborhood guys, closed off our block and pulled out arms and began patrolling the backyards and walkways because night was falling and no electricity anywhere except the hospitals, fire and police stations. I left to check in at the county hospital to help with triage. Many walking in with chest pains, etc. The first of the rescued persons from the Cypress freeway began to arrive. They were in awful shape. From the roof of the hospital, we could see the fire smoke in the Maria District of San Francisco. Seeing the Bay Area in blackness was crazy. It was about 6am when someone found some TV's and we saw the real damages. My paramedic fiancee' was giving an interview to CBS news about the Cypress freeway. Other medics brought their climbing gear was trying to get to people still alive. It was heartbreaking to know that nothing could be done. The structure was so unstable that any equipment could bring down the double-decker freeway to the ground. The only openings were less than two feet of clearance. A former boyfriend who was a sheriff's deputy, two weeks later had the task of working with the county coroner to remove those bodies from the crushed cars. That really took a toll on him.
Wow, I lived 11 miles from the epicenter in the Santa Cruz Mountians. I was like 14 when it hit, we made it through losing a pot of beans and a few things on shelves, didn't have power for a while and got food and water from the goverment, it was crazy.
I was living and working in SF at the time. We were incredibly lucky the World Series involved both Bay Area teams and that due to television coverage and wanting a prime time start on the East Coast game time was 5pm. Lots of people had left work early that day and fewer people were on the freeways and Bay Bridge as a result.
Barely survived a falling piece of masonry myself, meanwhile my boss was on the Bay Bridge just feet away from the panel that fell.
Our house was yellow-tagged and my workplace was red-tagged. Every year I drink a toast on October 17th at exactly 5:04 pm and remember those who didn’t make it and thank the universe that I and others did.
My Grandparents were living in the Marina District when Loma Prieta hit. Their building survived intact, but buildings all around them collapsed. I remember flying out from New York to help my mother with taking care of them.
I was in the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake in college, in LA. My roommate & I were still in bed around 7:40am and it started shaking. Books on the bookshelf jetted straight out horizontally then fell. My roommate, a S. California native, started shouting, "This is just a foreshock!', meaning a bigger one was coming. It was big enough at 5.9 & we had many aftershocks. You could tell right away when the car alarms started going off. It's a very primal feeling, like the gods are shaking the Earth under your feet. Been in a few smaller ones later, too. Not fun.
I've experienced a couple of earthquakes in Costa Rica. They have felt like you are standing on a floating platform after a boat went by creating waves. It made me a bit dizzy even.
I remember the highway collapse, seeing it on the news. It has made me terrified of double decker roadways and even being stopped under an overpass my whole life.
They talked about that 1906 earthquake - the devastation from that one was massive. And the worst part is, leadership was under such pressure to rebuild everything, to get life back to normal, that the new buildings they put up in a rush were even less suited to withstand earthquakes than the ones they replaced. Money and politics will always rule over safety.
I've been through two tiny earthquakes myself. The first one, I was in bed, and it just felt like someone sat down on the corner of the bed and bounced it. The second time I was at work, and it was a stomach dropping lurch and shook stuff around me. We had rolling racks that scooted around a little. No damage from either, but the realization that the earth could simply open under your feet, with no warning, was really a terrifying one.
I was a kid and I remember I heard it before I felt it. It sounded like a loud truck engine was outside my living room window and I felt the shaking a few secs after
In 1812, in Tennessee, the Mississippi River literally ran backward for several hours. Tennessee Emergency Teams spend 90% of their time prepping for the "next one." One TEMA member told me at a meeting, "We are trying to keep Memphis from being dumped into the Mississippi River." WOW!
I live in the Seattle area and the biggest quake I’ve lived through was the 2001 Nisqually Quake. I was in school still then and remember being in computer class when my computer started bouncing on the table. We realized what was going on and got under the tables and I remember being on my hands and knees under the table and feeling the ground moving beneath me. It wasn’t so much a shake as it was a roll, kind of like waves moving past but in very quick succession. Each earthquake is different though. Another time I was asleep in bed very early in the morning and was woken up by the feeling of my bed jolting almost like someone had bumped into it very forcefully and that was it. I was lying in bed half awake and though “I wonder if that was an earthquake” and sure enough when I looked it up the next morning we had had a smaller earthquake in the early morning hours.
I lived in California all my life and experienced earthquakes in the past but they were little and you would call your friend and say hey did you feel that? But I was in a restaurant went the 89 one hit and it literally felt like Godzilla was shaking the building. Everything that wasn't glued down, came down. Including hot glass coffee pots. I got under the table. It lasted about a minute. When it was done I came around the corner and some guy next to the cafe's window dove out of the way seconds before it broke. It was a wall sized window. I looked at my manager with 2 co-workers standing there with all of their mouths dropped open. Unreal experience. I will say that the World Series was a special one with 2 Bay area teams so a lot of people were in some place like a pub or at friends houses watching the game. That fact right there saved countless lives.
It was unbelievable, we were watching the game in North Carolina after having moved from Sacramento in 1985. Looked at each other and thought "not a moment to soon", thank God we moved!
I grew up in southern California, and have experienced a few earthquakes. I live in Utah now, and have seen Faultline Park up near the University of Utah. When I was working we had the Great Shakeout, which was a planned earthquake drill. In school, we always had them. I think the one that I was in 1961 or 1962 was the scariest for me, because we were in an old wooden building. The roof dropped 12 inches or so. We were in a rural area, in which there was a brick building that housed most of the grades, but 5th,7th, and 8th grades were in the older wooden building. The one that happened in 1971 had torn up the gas lines in my parents' house, and they had to have the gas company come in and replace the gas lines because every day enough gas was leaking to fill their dining room. They weren't even near the epicenter, but they felt the quake when it happened.
i was in fairview pa, when the tornado hit albion pa. scary as hell indeed. years later i moved to erie, and was in a basement when the smaller 5+ quake hit here in pennslyvania, i clearly felt the ground just shake like i was standing on a vibrating surface, there was motion in every direction, no discernable left or right, up or down, or side to side, just total vibration, but the thing that scared me the most was the ungodly rumbling sound so forceful it actually shook my insides, and u knew this sound was huge rocks deep underground smashing, twisting and trying to push into each other. It was a sound i'll never forget and never want to hear again! Kudos to those that live in areas like los angels, i for one would leave irrespective of cost, i never felt so absolutely insignificant as i did to this power of mother nature, no matter what u do u cannot beat plate tectonics - it makes and breaks entire
continents - think of that for a moment
6 years or so ago before i retired, we were building the Stanford hospital, and it was built on a bunch of 8 ft round rubber pads so the whole building would or could shift 3 foot in any direction.
My sister and i were watching the World Series. I was only 7 years old and watched what was happening. I've only felt the Mineral, VA earthquake that rocked the east coast.
No time to prepare... I was sitting out on the lawn when the earthquake struck. The ground below me felt like soft jello with no substance at all. The buildings around me swayed but it was the inconstancy of the earth beneath me that has stayed with me the most. During the 1989 earthquake, I was an hour north of SF in my home built on the second level in a flood area and all I remember was one of my roommates fighting with me for my doorway. I went to work expecting to see our warehouse in shambles but was surprised to see everything standing fine. One smaller one I looked up and saw the chandelier over the dining room table swaying and rushed out to see the water in the pool sloshing up and out of the pool.
i remember this day vividly, i lived 86 miles northeast if the epicenter. i watched the fireplace sway. after seeing the bay bridge & cypress freeway collapse, i still have a slight phobia whenever I'm in slow moving traffic that stalls me inside of the caldecot tunnel, underneath an overpass, or on any bridge. yet i find it hard to imagine living anywhere else. in the past few weeks there have been several magnitude 3.5ish or smaller quakes. growing up here it becomes a part of everyday life & you just have to prepare for the worst but pray for the best🤷🏾♀️
I live in Marin , the north side of the Golden Gate Bridge. I did experiences the Loma Prieta . It felt like the floors dropping and shifting up at the same time. Marin literally is split up. We don’t get earthquake’s, we get tectonic shifts. Very scary earthquake. Thank you for you great show. Cheers🎉
I live in washington state away from the tsunami zone but there is fears that a massive earthquake would cause mt rainier to have a massive mudslide which destroy my home town
I had driven over The Bay Bridge about a month before the quake and was wondering what would happen in a quake. Glad I wasn't there to find out.
My sister-in-law had drove under, and got off the viaduct 5 minutes before the quake hit.
You are seeing all this about the west coast. The largest quake in American history was the New Madrid quake. That is the central Mississippi valley. It was felt all the way to Boston, Massachusetts
Yeah, and It's way overdue for another big one.
@@prettybullet7728 sure is. We had a small one about 60 miles south of me and west across into Illinois. It was a pretty good shake.
@@douglassellers7528 I live in Central Arkansas about an hour away from Little Rock and I do worry about the New Madrid because this area of the country is in no way prepared for something like that.
I was in Fremont, Ca when this happened. You could see the ground roll. All the freeways shut down. The section of 880 that collasped wasn't too far away. I was 18.
I was at work during the big Nisqually Quake in February 28, 2001. I was in a small glass office inside of a huge warehouse designing embellishments for clothing. I heard and felt a large jarring and bumping. I assumed it was the large generator above my office. Suddenly, the room felt like it was rolling. I felt dizzy and looked over my shoulder to see stacks of clothing falling from very high shelves along the warehouse wall. I also saw the workers outside of my office running in a panic. I staggered to the door as the floor rolled and swayed, opened the door and yelled for the assembly workers to get under their tables, but no one listened. I stayed under the reinforced doorway and got an adrenalin rush and started hooting.😂 I guess I decided that I might as well enjoy the feeling of awe I had watching mother nature kick the crap out of us. It stopped and we were really lucky none of the giant lights fell on anyone. That was quite a ride. Then, of course, 7 months later, 9-11 happened. That was also surreal.
I was 10 and at my friend's place in San Jose, to watch the game, when it stuck. They all ran for cover and I just stayed on the couch and rode it out, I didn't even think about it, but they had a huge entertainment system that could have crushed me had it fallen forward. And just over a few years later I was visiting my dad in Palm Springs when the Northridge quake hit the LA area, they seem to follow me.
I'm in southern Wisconsin and I was at work listening to that baseball game when word came of the earthquake. I told the guy sitting next to me and he thought it was kind of funny until we learned just how bad it was. As for being in an earthquake, maybe about 20 years ago I had just gone to bed and was listening to a news station out of Chicago on my radio. Suddenly my bedroom shook and I heard a rumbling coming from somewhere. It only lasted a few seconds and I wasn't sure what happened. Neither of the two cats we had at the time were with me so I don't know how they reacted. A few minutes later there was a report on the radio that said it was an earthquake. I don't remember how strong it was but we didn't even have anything fall off a shelf. My late Mom and my Dad were both asleep and didn't feel or hear a thing.
Two weeks before the Loma Prieta earthquake I was in England. When my plane lifted off the tarmac at San Francisco airport, I remember thinking "what if an earthquake struck at this very moment? I wouldn't feel it, and I wouldn't know it happened until I got to London." There had been rumblings (no pun intended) for weeks, maybe a few months, prior to the earthquake that something was in the air. So it had been on my mind even as I left for my trip. While in a cafe in a small town somewhere in the UK, I asked a couple at the table next to me if they had heard anything on the news about an earthquake in California, as I had had no access to the news since arriving overseas. They told me they'd not heard anything.
Two weeks after coming home to San Jose, the earthquake struck. I was at work (it was just after 5 pm), working at a college campus, and dove under my desk as books came tumbling off the bookcases around me. People came from nearby classrooms to our office begging to use the phone to call loved ones. One lady was in so much shock she was convinced I was being mean to her when I said she couldn't use the phone; she kept offering to pay more money to get me to "relent," and couldn't be made to understand the phones simply no longer worked. No power, no utilities, spotty phone service for many days afterward. I was able to find out that my brother, who lived in San Francisco at the time, was OK, thanks to a brief blip in phone service that was short lived; it cut us off after about 60 seconds.
I've often wondered if the couple in England I asked about earthquake news remembered me once the story was headline news. They must have thought I was a prophet!
One of my sisters worked in Oakland at that time and normally took the 880 freeway to and from work. She would have been on the 880 if she hadn’t noticed no one had cleaned the coffee maker at the end of the day and stopped to do that. I was watching the World Series game and was very worried until she was able to call my parents who in turn called me and my other sister. One thing that came out of the Northridge earthquake was gas shut off valves. When an earthquake 3.5 or stronger on the Richter scale, it shuts off the natural gas into your house. I have one on my house and so do my neighbors. A lot of damage has been done by fires from gas lines into buildings breaking and resulting in fires. At this time there is no way to predict an earthquake. Currently the west coast has Shake Alert, which is an alert system that gives you a few seconds to get under something sturdy and stable. Here in Washington State we’re encouraged to have earthquake kits, water, food, first aid kit, and something to you warm and dry if necessary, like an emergency blanket. We had a strong earthquake in the Seattle area in February of 2001.
I lived there at the time. It was very scarry. A section of the Oakland San Francisco Bay Bridge and the Grove Shaftner Freeway in Berkley had a section of it collapsed. I was terrified. There was so much damage it was unreal. We had above ground electric poles. The poles and wires were swaying back and forth very badly. Love your reaction!
I was on the Golden Gate Bridge bringing my Dad his World Series Tickets that he had left at home. The traffic was bad so I was stopped. All of the sudden the whole city started swaying back and forth and I realized it wasn't the city swaying. It was the bridge. I weaved in and out of the lanes trying to get off the bridge quickly. Once I got off, I couldn't get off at the exit to go to my stepmother's apartment so I turned towards the Marina. All the power went off, so there were no stoplights. It was chaos and then suddenly a building burst into flames and started to come down towards me so I sped up, driving on the sidewalks at times. About 10 minutes after the earthquake, people started acting like traffic cops since the lights were still off. It usually took 20 minutes to get to my stepmother's apartment, that day it took 2 hours. When I got there my Dad was so happy to see me and I said, "I'm never bringing you anything you leave at home again." The power was off all night, everyone gathered on the roofs of their buildings and shared food, some bbq'd and others drank. We watched the fires around the city and waited for dawn. It was one of the most terrifying days of my life. I didn't find out until later that my boyfriend's father had been killed on the freeway that collapsed.
An earthquake feels like you're surfing a wave that also shakes you back and forth. The Golden Gate Bridge is designed to sway so it was the safest place to be and I'm lucky I was on it.
Im from the LA Harbor area, so usually the major earthquakes werent really that big of a deal. They're up north, or in the desert. All we get was a little shaking or like a wave under your feet. Nothing bad, and actually kind of fun. They only last for a few seconds or so. No biggie. This one was barely felt in LA.
But.. in the early 1990s was the Northridge quake. That changed everything for us Los Angelino's. It started out bad right from the rip. Just when you thought it was going to stop, it got worse. Then you hear a girl screaming and realize its you. You're safest in the hallway bathroom doorway, if your house or flat has one. The central structure of the building is where you want to be. Doorways are strong. Stay away from the kitchen, and DONT go outside!! Powerlines coming down, debris from buildings falling, the ground opening up, etc... There is an earthquake warning system. First, you might notice an abundance of ants on the ground (if you're outside). Second, you'll hear every dog in the neighborhood barking. Third, car alarms start going off. This all happens in about 3 seconds. Barely enough time to get to "safety".
It’s a creepy feeling when the solid ground no longer feels solid. It can make you feel nauseous. Can’t steady yourself because everything is moving. It’s a surreal feeling. I worked for a while in Las Vegas and the office building I was in has those shock absorbers on its base to damping the shaking of the structure. You could still feel the quake being on the second floor. Was only a 4.
I lived in San Francisco in 89. i was a sophomore in high school. the earthquake experience for me was like this:
At home watching Roseanne on TV. We hear what sounds like a freight train coming right towards our house. Theres an initial *JUMP* it feels like something has hit the house, but then a sideways motion begins. This is like standing on a table that your friends are jostling around. they last about 15 seconds. some thigs will fall from shelves. This is HARMLESS unless youre hit by something.
At about 20 seconds come the secondary ground waves. its like standing on a boat in medium seas. If you have a long enough line of sight along the ground, you can actually SEE these waves. Hold on to something or sit down because you WILL fall at anything above a 4 on the Richter scale. These are the waves/shakes that are destructive and can last for as long as they damn well please! seconds to literal minutes. **At this point we had left the house after the book shelves had emptied themselves. The swimming pool have begun to slosh. the waves in the pool would become extreme enough to empty half of it into the backyard and the living room. this is an IN GROUND pool**
this is when you notice the thick smell of gas in the air. checking all the houses in the area, we found 2 including my own, had ruptured their inbound city gas line. fortunately it was easy enough to just shut them off.
no power or gas for a few weeks. but also no school ;)
anyways, yeah thats how we celebrated the end of the 80s. You do anything fun? ;)
I was scared by only one earthquake, an aftershock of the Whittier Narrows quake in 1987. It was around 3:00 a.m., and I was asleep in a four-poster bed in the second story of a two-story house. Nearly shook me out of the bed. .
Recently in northern California, we had a measly 3.5 quake while at the dinner table. We were mid conversation, and my mom suddenly said, "Earthquake!" Three or four seconds later the movement started. We just sat there looking around, letting the rumbles happen. Only lasted about 15 seconds or so, and then a few seconds of aftershocks. I asked my mom, "How'd you know?" She said she heard the very low rumble of other homes shifting around to our east. That's about the most warning you can expect - basically none.
A small one like that (2 to 4 magnitude) feels similar to the movement of a car on a bumpy gravel road, except that rather than getting moved up-and-down, you're mostly getting moved side-to-side.