It was so weird. I was watching the news and they all froze and talked about the earthquake. I thought it was strange that they felt it and I didn't (I am 50 miles south of LA in OC). A few seconds later it hit my house. It was strange having an advanced warning. It didn't feel too strong at my place. Hear it was a 4.4 in Westwood.

I had the same experience. Right after I felt it, I turned on TV, but it seemed they had already been talking about it. Must have been a slow moving rumbler!

I slept through it.

There was a big earthquake in Chile yesterday. I wonder if they're connected at all. Theirs measured about 6.7 with an aftershock of 6.6.

Didn't feel it here in San Diego.

Did not feel it in southern OC.

Slept through it here in the O.C. as well.

Saw on the TV that this video of newscasters during the earthquake is going viral.

http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=video+of+newscasters+during+earthquake+going+viral&FORM=VIRE1#view=detail&mid=AF15F06FE0B2AD2AEA80AF15F06FE0B2AD2AEA80

Once getting the 'feeling" of a quake, CA seemed to have rumblers, shakers, and rollers on a daily basis. Nothing exciting to worry about. Near the epicenter of a 6.0 was enough. With the multiplication factor of the Richter Scale, I would NOT want to experience a 7 or above!

The Chilean quake and your recent California quake were connected in a sense. Both are on the same fault system that runs from Southern Chili, by California, by the front of
Alaska and finally out along the Aluetian chain of islands. Its the eastern edge of the Pacific plate. There are other parallel faults, some very big - think San Andreas. The San Andreas runs up the center of the Gulf of California; It enters Calofornia at the top end of the gulf and scoots on up the continent. It goes through South San Francisco and enters the ocean just west of the Golden Gate Bridge. That fault system extends all the way into the populated areas of Alaska. It creeps all the time. The local road authority has given up on maintaining a concrete roadway where the San Andreas crosses Half Moon Bay road. At this location, they install macadam for about 1/4 mile across the fault. When it rips apart, its easy to hot patch the asphalt.

jemdandy -

I find the last part of your post interesting, can you tell me the source?

I live not too far from what you're describing. Crystal Spring Reservoir is just west of Hwy 280, near its intersection with Hwy 92 on the SF Peninsula. I'd always heard that the San Andreas fault ran down the middle of the reservoir and was the cause of the canyon where the reservoir was placed. Half Moon Bay Road is the portion of Hwy 92 running west from 280 to the top of the hill. It crosses the reservoir on a man-made causeway (basically just a pile of dirt).

The concrete road comment particularly caught my attention, because most roads around here (excepting freeways and streets in older urban neighborhoods) are asphalt.

Jem, I'd like your source about the asphalt part of Rt 92.
I've googled for info and found nothing.
I've also driven the road a lot and never seen something
like that. I belong to a golf club in HMB. I'll ask the
locals about it.

My unpublished source about the road:

For several years in the 1970s, I was the seismic engineer for Eaton. It was my job to qualify electrical control equipment for power generating plants to withstand seismic motions. One one of my trips to San Francisco, I stayed at the home of my boss's brother in San Mateo and the locals told me about the road maintence problem for the road that went out to Half Moon Bay. I drove my rental car over that road and sure enough, when I got to the fault, there was dip in the landscape and the road surface changed to asphalt where it crossed the fault.

I have not been back to that location since 1980 so I can not say what the road surface is at present. The road that I was on could have been one other than Hwy 92. Hwy 92 crosses Crystal Springs Lake. The scary thing is that San Andreas Reservoir and Crystal Springs Lake sit in slump zones on the fault. A large shear on the fault such as the 1906 shake could rupture dams creating instant flood in certain places. The Reservoir is part of San Francisco's water supply.

The 1906 quake was a financial disaster as well as destruction of the infrastructure. The newly built city hall and court house was destroyed leaving the town with a hugh building debt and no building. Fires caused almost as much damage as the quake. The quake hit at 5:12 am on April 18, 1906. A number of residents had arisen and was cooking breakfast, some on coal or wood fired stoves. The quake broke gas and water lines and dumped a number of cooking fires out of the stoves. Chimneys were destroyed. The town began to burn and the fire department was hampered due to loss of water in the mains.

If you would like to read about notable earthquakes in the US, I recommend a government publication:

Earthqauke History of the United States
Publication 41.1
Revised Edition (Through 1970)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
Environmental Data Service
Boulder, Colorado.

Unfortunately, this is an old publication and may no longer be available. I have the 1970 edition. Later editions would have more quakes. This is a technical publication, but is written for the general public and is easy to read. It does contain a number of black/white illustrations. The effects of major earthquakes are described. One of the most interesting is the New Madrid quake. This was 3 major quakes on Dec 16, 1811; Jan 23, 1812; and Feb 7, 1812 each followed by many after shocks. Chruch bells rang in Boston. Reelfoot Lake in Tennessee was formed at that time. It is a slump zone that filled with ground water.

It's unnerving and fascinating at the same time. About 12 years ago, not too long after I moved to northern Alabama, I was awakened out of sleep by a deep rumble, then a shaking of the whole house. Dishes and windows rattled, my loaded bookshelves swayed, etc. What a fright. Hah! I thought that living in a tornado belt was bad enough. :-o

For readers, the USGS link below refers to the New Madrid Quake 1811-1812.
But also has links to their EQ archives.

Here is a link that might be useful: New Madrid Quake

Here's a link you can click on for the newscasters video... where they felt the jolt during their broadcast.

Here is a link that might be useful: Newscasters under the desk during earthquake

jemdandy,

Thanks for posting back. There no sense in trying to track down a 30 year old story, so fair enough.

I've read that more damage was caused by fire than by the shaking in San Francisco after the '06 quake. Broken gas lines and water mains proved to be a deadly and unfortunate combination in a town built of mostly wooden structures. Two interesting back stories:

1. In an effort to try to minimize fire risk for future quakes, a lot of the rebuilding around the Bay Area used masonry structures instead of wood. Unfortunately, the techniques of internal reinforcing (as is done today) wasn't known or practiced. Many of those brick structures were damaged (and some collapsed) in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. Many have since undergone retrofitting, and external steel and wood bracing can often be seen in these old buildings.

2. Vowing to never again be caught without water, the SF fire department was provided with a network of underground water holding cisterns placed throughout the city. The cisterns exist to this day and are visible as circular brick patterns in streets and intersections.

the only "biggie" when I lived in ca was in the 1950's did big damage to the brick structures in Bakersfield...we lived in a brick apt building in Hollywood...my ohio born dad took us to drive-in theaters for 2-3 night after, lol...all I remember were the powerlines hitting and sparking....

one other was around Christmas in long beach...my aunt's tree shook but didn't lose one ornament...they said the building was built on "rollers"?

Thanks for info Jem.... very interesting...I'm going to see
if it still exists....

Jel, they handled it very well, didn't they? Although they might have gotten up from under the desk a little too soon because something from the ceiling might have fallen.

As for water supplies, we thought we were being smart switching to a tankless water heater (which works fine, by the way). It only occurred to us later that we lost our emergency water supply. So now we have gallons of water stored in the garage. It's a nuisance as they leak periodically and have to be replaced.

I was raised in southern Illinois and experienced 2 minor quakes in the 1950s. The second one was interesting because I saw it coming! I lived out in the country and our house was on a low hill overlooking our farm. The creek bottoms were fully forested. About 1 second before the quake arrived, I heard and saw it. It was like a water wave except it was a wave in the earth. As the wave came through the forest, it could be seen in the tree tops. The trees reacted the same as a field of grain when a gust of wind sweeps through it. The wave was seen sweeping through the tree tops accompanied by loud rustleing of the leaves and limbs. I was too facinated to think about my own safety. Some trigs fell out of the tree I was standing under. That image is burned into my memory.

You've missed all the fun.

I was in LA for

1952 Kern County quake - 7.3 (I was a baby, it knocked my crib over)

1971 San Fernando - 6.6 (~6 am, quite a wake up)

Then moved to the SF Bay area

1989 Loma Prieta - 6.9 (was in a high rise office building when it hit)