Ever been in an Earthquake?

[Buffy]

Not only to find out how many of our members have been in one, but also feel free to post your experiences and attitudes about them.

 

I've lived in Earthquake Country all my life and have been in a couple of big ones ('89 Loma Prieta and '94 Northridge). Motivation for this question is we had a nice little 4.2 quake Friday Night not too far away from us.

 

I *much* prefer them to hurricanes, tornados and other cataclysms that you know about, and have to wait for in many cases for hours or days wondering if they're headed for *you*.

 

Unstable ground,

Buffy

[Mercedes Benzene]

I remember feeling one a couple years back. It wasn't at all big, but it was cool because we basically never get earthquakes where I live.

I believe the magnitude was somewhere around 1.

No damage, no injuries, just a rather unusual event. I would describe it maybe as a truck driving by your house.

 

Cool.

[kalesh]

I have been through three. All were small. No damage at all. magnitude around 1 to 2

[Erasmus00]

I lived in Japan for awhile. No big ones, but lots of little ones.

-Will

[Monomer]

My part of Australia isn't prone to them, and I haven't experienced one. Apparently there's a fault line running from Adelaide up to Gawler (about 1hr north of the city) and I recall experiencing a very minor tremor which lasted for about 2 seconds when I was a kid, but I'd hardly say I'd experienced an earthquake.

[Queso]

I was a baby when the '89 quake hit Cali.

 

There've been a few that I've rocked thru since then, too.

 

I've always wanted to be in the mountains when the earth shakes.

[Drip Curl Magic]

I, too, was just barely walking when the big one hit in 89.

 

and since then, I've inevitably experienced many more minor earth shakes being that I live in california. More to come, probably.

 

I don't mind them much. So long as I'm outside when it hits.

 

Being trapped in a small box during an earthy tremor is a bit menacing.

[Tormod]

I've just experienced small tremors. Never any big ones.

[pgrmdave]

Technically, I have. However, while I've heard that there have been earthquakes, I've never felt them, and from what I've heard, the strongest of them are around 3 on the richter scale, and most are between 1 and 2.

[Eclogite]

I felt a magnitude 6.5 +/- in Singapore with an epicentre in northern Sumatra back in the seventies. The swaying of my bed woke me up and I then became entranced by the light fixture overhead swinging back and forth.

 

Also I experienced a small one in Mexico (Villahermosa) in '79 and two larger ones in Mexico City in 1980. One of these brought down some buildings and caused a handful of fatalities. I recall my shoes walking themselves out from under the bed and water sloshing out of the kitchen sink. (We were on the twelfth floor).

[Becca]

mine doesn't really count i don't think. there was a small one which got to britain a few years ago. i didn't actually notice it, but other people did who were in the same town so i assume it happened. i think i was struggling with some particularly hideous french work at the time...

[WuffenCuckoo]

I experienced a 4.4.earthquake once. I grew up in a city that is subject to mild (minor 1 - 1.5 on the Richter scale) 'quakes (called microseisms - due to tunnels collapsing in the many mines in the region) a couple of times a week so I was astonished to note that the terror evoked by the very noticeable (and relatively prolonged) shaking of the earth was all out of proportion to the stimulus. I don't really want to be in a 'big one'. The psychological effect, like the physical effect, is wildly non-linear.

[freeztar]

I was in the Puget Sound earthquake back in 2001. I had just moved to washington state three months before and was certainly not expecting an earthquake. It woke me up and my bed was bouncing up and down as I tried to hold onto it for dear life. I was on the second floor of an apartment building and my walls kept swaying for a couple minutes after the quake ended. It was a 6.8 magnitude quake.

[somebody]

i been in a big one. It was when i was back in India (1999 or 2000, not sure). It was around 7 i think. Sadly, it took place in the morning of a national holiday so many people were home. SInce homes are build with blocks of rock, not with wood, the death rate was high.

 

it was unforgettable experience.

[Fatstep]

3 years ago the news said we had one that was about a 1.8 I believe, it was at 4 am, so I don't know anyone that felt it. We never get them here, in NC.

[Thorshammer]

I was on the outer part of a magnitude 6 in Riverside Ca, which centered in L.A. It hit in the middle of the night, and felt pretty wierd. It's hard to describe. Everything was just moving around a bit, and I got out of bed, wondering if I should run outside. It stopped, so I went back to bed...

[Qfwfq]

The strongest quake I felt so far had its epicentre in Gemona del Friuli in 1976 and caused a lot of devastation in that region and in neighboring Slovenia, leaving around a thousand deaths and tens of thousand homeless. It was a good 6,4 Richter and it was reported on international news. At the time I was living just west of Verona, quite a distance away, yet it came pretty strong and sent us all rushing out in panic.

 

I was in grade 6 and when it hit, at about 9 in the evening local time, I was studying geography; family was sitting at the TV and I had whimsically spread myself over my parent's bed with the door closed. The longer waves reached us first and I became aware of the bed springs oscillating and absently reckoned the dog must be crawling under the bed but suddenly I realized it couldn't be him and thought "what the heck!?" and got a bit worried. Then the whole room began to shake violently and everything was rattling noisily, I realized it was an earthquake and just trotted out of the house. We lived on the ground floor and I only had a few metres of hallway to get out, I knew I was a lot safer outside so I didn't really lose my head or anything. In the next few months, there were other shocks from the same area, not nearly as bad but strong enough that we felt them around Verona. I've also experienced other moderate shocks coming from nearby areas.