Yesterday morning at around 4:30 am, my bed shook with a loud noise and I soon realized that we were having an earthquake. The epicenter was just north of Palomar Mountain in northern San Diego county but usually when we have one that we can actually feel, it is usually out in the desert area. It measured 4.1 on seismic scale.
It didn't last but a few seconds but it was enough to get me up and my day started extra early yesterday. I had some computer work to catch up on so I just made the best of it.
Jeff Dowler did a post the other day , The Big One Happens...., about a preparedness exercise acted throughout California in which millions of Californians participated in preparation for the Big One. ( I think they consider a magnitude of 8 or over as the Big One). It was guestimated that 5 million participated. Now what should we think about the other 28 million plus all the people just visiting that didn't even know about it. On any given day that could be a few million more.
Well this jolt yesterday wasn't it but I also know that once these more sizable earthquakes start there are usually more to follow. Yesterday morning at 9:25AM there was a second one.They call that one an aftershock because it followed a sizable one and it was believed it was a further adjustment of the same plates. And I expect those earth plates that need adjusting periodically are not through just yet. We will see. What is also true is that the quakes go on continuously, nearly every day. It is only when they become more sizable above the 3 level, that we take notice of them. For most people that slept through yesterdays rattler, it was just another none event.
For the many that have never experienced an earth tremor before it has an eerie feeling surrounding it as the ground rolls and things just bounce up in the air. In the more robust adjustments, pictures can be knocked from the walls and accessories and things in cabinets move and sometimes just fall out of the cabinets. It takes a pretty good jolt before people usually take notice.
In the most serious tremors, the land can roll in mounds a number of feet in the air ( one can not hardly imagine this especially if you haven't witnessed it yourself ) and of course what's sitting on it begins to break apart, like our last big quake, in Northridge in 1994. These quakes are part of the risk one agrees to, to live in the land where the sun shines most of the year around and temperatures are mostly warm but moderate all year. With magnificent coastline and dramatic topography, it is difficult to believe that it could ever change, if just for a moment in time as the earth's crust begins to crack under stress.
The Big One is forecast sometime within the next few decades or so. And one can not be too prepared for that inevitability. But I dare say most are not prepared and it is not like there is going to be some notice somewhere that the big one is on its way like we have come to expect with a a hurricane. When it hits, it hits and everything else will be history from then on, not a forecast. In the last quake in Northridge my nephew who lived in Northridge as his home literally crumbled and he and his family could only helplessly watch.
With California's new seismic retrofit standards, many highways and bridges and public buildings have been re-fortified. But there are plenty of all those structures that have not been and for even those that have been, please understand that there is no written guarantee that goes with them that you will be safe. Being prepared or not is up to each person living here. If the possibility of losing your home or even your life or those of your family is not all that important at least enough to learn how to protect yourself and your belongings, then by all means just go about your business and ignore this intrusion.
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Great post thanks for the info...