Sage

Now, if I lived in Cali, like some of you do, it wouldn't be a big deal, but I live in Asheville NC.

3.8 with an origin in Hot Springs. I was downtown in the comic/game store Martel and I hang out with, and all the sudden the floor started shaking. We (me, Martel, and our friends J and A) just looked at each other and were like "Holy crap what the hell was that?" then the phone started ringing off the hook with friends calling being like "did you feel it too?"

So, I've been through an earthquake... tic that one off the list!


Any of you guys been in ones? Stronger? What's it like when the whole earth rumbles, like in a 6 or a 7?

__________________

divagrrrl

hee hee.... I SLEEP through anything under a 4.0. Toughen up.

It is pretty trippy though, isn't it?

Pragma

I've been in a minor one - I believe it was a 3.4 or something a little less severe than that in California about ten years ago. It didn't do much more than move stuff around shelves a few inches and startle people. Thankfully I've never been through one worse than that - and hopefully I never will. They scare me - I like the earth under my feet staying quite solid and immobile, thank you very much.

__________________
Eat antimatter, Posleen-boy!

the_ref

Heck, I slept through the Northridge quake...

Okay, I was living in Santa Barbara at that time, but still...

__________________
"Jack! You've debauched my sloth!"

cyrnel

When the bookcases empty themselves at you, building parts are failing dangerously, and the streets move like water in the p-waves, then you've been in a quake.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Siege

I've slept through a small one. And the one I was awake was even worse. I didn't feel a thing. All that happened was my craptacular dial-up connection disconnected.

How disappointing.

__________________
"Your name's Geek? Do you know the origin of the term? A geek is someone who bites the heads off chickens at a circus. I would never let you suck my dick with a name like Geek"

--Kevin Smith

This part just makes my posts easier to find

Zeraph

I've yet to experience one, hopefully I will in a safe way. Now being close to a big tornado, that would be freaky.

fatmanforprez

I sleept through northridge
we had one twice that a few weeks ago that happened while i was at work, and i had thought my boss was movng the press and dropped it and didnt think about it till the second shake (or was it the 6th) then it was gone (yes my boss is in fact a douche, and i woulda helped him but it was his quick yelp followed by silence which means accident no problems, if there was a problem i woulda heard a scream or shout afterwards)

earthquakes are fun when you hail from sunny southern california

ShaniFaye

The NC quake last nite was felt all the way down here....but I thought it was Dave making the earth move

__________________
I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Zephyr66

Never been in an earthquake seeing as they don't really happen up here.

guthmund

Once about 5(?) years ago. I don't know if it's what you would call an earthquake, but it gave the house a good shake and knocked some poorly balanced knick-knacks off the wall. I must admit, it took me completely by surprise.

I assume it was off the New Madrid fault in Missouri and I assume it was a pretty good sized one as I felt it over 200 miles away. I can't remember there being anything about it on the news or in the paper, however.

__________________
No signature. None. Seriously.

Charlatan

When I lived in Ottawa I experienced a couple eathquakes.

The worst happened in the middle of the night while I was alone doing the night shift at the campus radio station. Shook everything.

Kind of freaked me out because all I could think of was... I am in a very large concrete building and I would be crushed if it collapsed.

Californians can yawn all they want but for those of us who don't have them all the time it is very odd to have the earth move like that... I mean, the Earth is the foundation upon which we stand. It isn't supposed to move and when it does... gives me the willies.

__________________
"My hands are on fire. Hands are on fire. Ain't got no more time for all you charlatans and liars."
- Old Man Luedecke

lurkette

Damn - I slept right through it! Not sure what we would have felt 3 hours away, but...damn! I've always wanted to see what an earthquake felt like. Oh well.

__________________
"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

- Anatole France

maleficent

I friend of mine tells a story how he was in south america somewhere ( i think it was south america, they all spoke spanish, so it could have been southern california... he was in a high rise, when there was an earthquake... he claims in a very un-manly way, he hit the floor, rolled under a desk and basically cowered like a girl... he claims that when the shaking stopped, he came out from under the desk and all the secretaries, who never stopped typing and doing work the entire time, just looked at him and giggled... (Now this story was relayed over several bottles of wine so it might have been exaggerated a bit for comedic effect)

When i lived i my parents house in Northwestern nj -- it wasn't far from the Ramapo fault line (an active but kinda quiet fault line) One morning I awoke to pictures falling off the wall and stuff falling off shelves...and the burglar alarm going off... Every so often in later years, if you heard car alarms going off late at night, it was more than likely the fault line at work...

__________________

ShaniFaye

we felt it down here....and we are 6 hours from YOU lol (and 3 hours from Ashville)

__________________
I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

Meditrina

Oh my! I have to call my parents. They live in Hendersonville. They must have felt it too. I am glad it was not that bad and that everyone is ok.

__________________
"Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles." ~Alex Karras

Elphaba

The last one we had was a six pointer about five years ago. My monitor was trying to dance it's way into my lap and the roar was so loud I didn't hear all of the crashing going on in the kitchen. That puppy knocked the house partially off it's foundation.

The dogs were not amused.

Vincentt

Hmm, a earthquake in NC huh?

I never felt any while in NC, my first have been here in Japan.

There have been one or more earthquakes a month since I got here.

Was a real big one just recently.

It really is something... I am always shocked and looking around like "what do I do", other people pretend nothing is happening and keep reading newspapers, or whatever.

__________________
.

Fremen

We had a small one here years ago. I didn't feel a thing.

I would like to be in one on a waterbed to see what it would be like.

__________________
Google

Marvelous Marv

The Alaska one in the early sixties was one of the largest on record.

__________________
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher

Marvelous Marv

What is thought by some to be the largest earthquake ever in the US occurred close to you. I can't remember if it was centered near St. Louis or Kansas City.

It was in the 1800s if memory serves. And it rang church bells in BOSTON.

__________________
"The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
Margaret Thatcher

Elphaba

That one occurred while I was in band class. We were told to get under our metal folding chairs while the floor waved up and down and the walls bowed out. The lights were still swinging when the band instructor ordered us to start playing again. That guy had some major cojones.

ironman

I live in Guatemala and we have like 20 little perceptible eathquakes or "temblores", as we call them if they don't destroy anything, every single year. There was a time when i was like 11, when we had like 300 temblores in a 2 week period, man, that was funny and scary at the same time!!! schools were closed down, we all slept in the living rooms of our homes and the earth was rocking hard!!!, right here it is normal as we are over the San Andrés fault line and we have over 32 volcanos (10 of them constantly eruptioning). Five years ago The Pacaya Volcano practically blew away it's crater and it rained like 3 inches of ash all over the city, that's one of the coolest things i've seen in my life, there were huge electrical storms caused by the static in the ash, the day turned into night in minutes and the sunlight was defracted by the crystals in the air giving an impressive show of colors and shadows, not to mention the light emitted by the lava, simply beautifull.

__________________
If I agreed with you we´d both be wrong

snowy

Ah, the Nisqually quake. Yeah, we felt it all the way down here in Oregon--the composition of the Willamette Valley means some of the places here felt it better than places closer to the quake in WA. They evacuated a lot of schools that day I was walking to class when it hit but when I got back my heavy, lofted bed had managed to wiggle itself several inches from its original position.

I've been in a lot of small quakes--when I was growing up in the Puget Sound I lived right across the bay from an active fault line, and it would always give off 3-4.0 quakes at least once every couple of months. The coolest one came in waves and made it feel as if I were on a boat. I wouldn't have felt it if I hadn't been staying up late reading when I wasn't supposed to and I did get caught because it woke my mom up...oops.

__________________
If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Grasshopper Green

We had a 3 here a few years ago; I remember watching my plate of eggs dance across the table and my mom cursing because she had been playing a record and it got scratched

We are overdue for a big one here in Utah. Salt Lake sits on a major fault line that has a serious earthquake every 1500 years or so. It's been over 2000 years since the last one; I hope to hell I'm not living here when it hits, because it's gonna be bad.

__________________
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

TheOtherDave™

As a long-term CA resident (20 yrs this week), I've been through a number of 'em

Most notable was the Loma Prieta quake in Aug 1989. 6.7 mag., I think.

Even though I was just starting the 6th grade that summer, I vividly remember that afternoon.

The shaking was so prolonged, and the vertical movement so intense, it was impossible to ignore... even though I lived about 75 miles north of the epicenter. As soon as the shaking began, I ducked under a stout desk at the edge of the sheer wall in our kitchen and rode her out. The floor and walls rippled in sync with the waves. A few sheetrock joints ripped open in the celing and a few of the grout joints were pulverized in the tremor. But for the most part, we were fortunate to have such minimal damage.

This was mostly due to the fact that our timber structure sat on bedrock at the north end of the San Francisco Bay. OTOH, the Marina and Waterfront districts of SF fared much worse... to say nothing of the poor souls who were crushed on the Nimitz Expressway.

To wit, I still remember coming back from the local market with my mother about 15 mins after the quake. From the passenger seat of a 505 Peugeot, we cresting the hill that looked across to the Marina district and paused by a neighbor's house, only to see a tremendous ball of CNG-fueled fire rise into the sky.

I could go on, but we've all seen the pictures.
So yeah, it was a trip.

zakool21

I hardly feel anything under 4.5.... I lived through both Loma Prieta ('89) and Northridge ('94). I was in the 3rd floor of a motel, one mile from the epicenter in Northridge when the quake hit. I was at home when loma prieta hit. I remember both earthquakes vividly.

justjt

They always seem to happen when I am in bed ....so it's like Mother Nature is just rocking me to sleep.