Earthquake tonight

So, how many of us So. Calif. people felt the 4.7 quake tonight?

DH and I were watching tv and then the house started to shake like it's never shaken before. We figured the epi center had to be pretty close. Before we knew where it was centered, I called my dad in El Segundo and he said it was pretty rough at his home too. He thought there was an explosion then it just rocked. Come to find out it was only about 2 miles from his home. He had seen any damage, but I called my sister who is about 7 miles from him and she had some pictures come off the wall and all the other pictures are crooked. I also called my other family members and they felt we pretty shook also, but fine.

I have felt many here in So. Calif., but nothing like i felt this one.

There was some window damage at the Long Beach airport and downtown LB also. I wonder how Mike fared with it.

Haven't felt any after shocks tonight, but they say we could have them for the next 2 days!!!

Donna

This was a pretty good one ! No damage that I'm aware of.
I had a sink full of dishes and the water spilled out onto the kitchen floor, and some glassware fell over inside the cabinets and broke. That's about it.
Haven't seen my cats for 2 hours !

Mike, did you look under the couch and bed? lol

Glad to hear things are ok with you.

Glad you are all ok. My DH is down in El Segundo, visiting his daughter. Bet it made the trip interesting. We lived down there for a long time, so he's used to it. I checked the internet when I heard about it, doesn't seem to be any bad damage.

Again, glad everyone is ok.

You guys stay up too late for me. We had a pretty good shaking down here, too, so I can only imagine what it was like in El Segundo. Glad your dad and sis are OK, Donna.

I was exhausted, zonked out at 10:45 and missed the fun......

The quake was waaay before that, Sherry, didn't you feel it?

My first quake and I had no doubt what it was. It was a noticable jolt then a little rattling of pictures on the wall. I'm indoctrinated now, a bona fide So. Cal. dweller.

Congratulations! It's when you hear a freight train coming where there are no tracks that you worry! LOL

I suppose you're right. Hopefully I'll escape that one.

Huh...well, I was online and then reading...guess I just wasn't paying attention...Jer didn't feel it either..

We had a hanging lamp in the living room, if I wasn't sure if I felt one or not, I always looked to see if the lamp was swaying. We had small quakes so often, you just ignore them, even some of the 4+'s if you were moving around and it was a rolly one. DD said it shook them up pretty good, rattled stuff, nothing broke, she was glad her daddy was there. LOL But Sis is right, the freight train kind certainly get your attention.

I just listened for any noises from the birds. When the little one was very young, he had nightfrights and thrashed in his cage. Birds can break a blood feather doing that, so we just pay attention for a minute. They usually sleep right through them, or at least give no outward sign they've been disturbed.

Didn't mean to make you nervous, Randy, I just treat it like an E-ticket ride at Disneyland as long as there is no damage. One of Sally's boys was on the Terminal Island bridge (right, Sis?) when a big one hit and he wanted to do it again, as I recall. :-)

Yep, he did, Mom said no.

I was working when one hit. Leaning over a solar panel on a step stool......put my soldering iron right through that panel. It was sooo funny, there wasn't a thing I could have done to stop it, but then I had to fix it.

Having lived in Calif. my entire life, I have to admit that they still make me nervous...especially when whole sections of the freeway come down !!!

I feel perfectly safe where I am though: This bldg. survived the huge 1933 Long Beach Earthquake unscathed. The houses on both sides of this place were leveled when that one hit.

I was serving Mass at our old church in Culver City when the Sylmar earthquake hit in '72 ( or was it '71 ???) The huge crucifix hanging over the altar was swaying back and forth and banging against the wall. It was eerie to say the least.
The priest stopped for a moment and kept on with the mass. I figured it was a pretty safe place to be if this was "the end" !!! The church was solid concrete with rebar and sustained no damage at all.

When I got home afterward, the entire neighborhood was out on their lawns in their pajamas !

We just learn to live with them.

This message was edited May 18, 2009 6:26 PM

The Sylmar was the worst for me. They didn't really scare me unless they didn't quit. Those long rolly ones with a sideways jerk got me every time. You put on a good face for the kids, but then I had three boys, nothing scares them!!!! LOL
Like Sis says, they want to do it again!

If I remember correctly, the younger of our two brothers was on the freeway on his motorcycle during the Sylmar quake. He lived in Simi Valley and worked in L.A.

Northridge is the one I really remember - freight train through the bedroom. I think for a split second I thought it was a jet, because we weren't that far from LAX. The stone rams that are now in our driveway water feature had a 200 pound slab of glass on top of them and there were little plastic disks protecting the glass from the stone. When we looked at the table, the glass had moved and the disks were on the floor. I ended up singing a lullaby to our parrot to calm her and every once in a while she still says "hush...cry" when I hum it to her. We lived in one of those tall & skinny houses - three stories, one below street level - so it swayed like crazy and the birds were upstairs. DH took it like a trooper of course - those unflappable British. LOL

Still rather do earthquakes than tornadoes every year! Been there - once was enough.

Which Sylmar Quake? The one in '71? I remember that one quiet well. I'd rather live through a shaker than a tornado any day! My rule is, start counting, if after 30 seconds it starts to get more violent, take cover.
DP, and earthquake virgin, must have been quite a ride for you! Get prepared and get used to them. Then you'll be like the rest of us CA's, mostly blase' about them. We felt it, all except the oldest kid. No damage here. Was really annoyed that the news kept rerunning the same segment on the earthquake and never got around to a decent weather report. I hate LA News Stations. Rather have SD Stations.
What KC, said about the freight train, people often hear quakes before they hit, DP.
Hope everyone is okay, and they check in.
WIB,
SW

It didn't really scare me. I was startled by the noise much like if a kid had hit the side of the house with a baseball, which is what I thought immediately. At least I thought that until I felt the vibrations. I've lived in tornado country and hurricane country and I've seen the devastation both cause. Homes and lives are destroyed by these things EVERY year. I realize the potential of a large quake is possibly greater than these but that's not something we've seen yet. I lived through hurricane Camille in the late 60s in Mississippi. It was just as strong as Katrina, there weren't as many homes available to be destroyed so the damage was less. But the heartbreak wasn't any less. I agree with you SW. I'll take the shifting ground over the blowing wind.

As a favorite comedian of mine said. "It's not THAT the wind is blowin', it's WHAT the wind is blowin'."

Ah, you have the right attitude for earthquake country, DP. Just be prepared. It's good to have these little ones now and again, as it reminds us to brush up on our "what to do in case" plans.

Reminds me, we added some pictures to the walls that aren't wired. :-)

I was living in LA for the Sylmar quake, then we lived on an island off Alaska with an active volcano on the 2 islands to either side. I thought I'd never be bothered by a lil' ol' quake again, but I was mistaken. In '89 after Loma Prieta I was driving home from helping someone else clean up a lot of broken glass, and suddenly realized I might come around the corner to find I didn't have a house (it had only been built in '87). Our house was fine, unlike many friends a few blocks away whose homes were built on soil that "liquefied". We hadn't even lost power. I remember vacuuming up 5 lbs of cornmeal, 1 gal of kerosene and a big bottle of stinky insecticide in the garage. Sat down to take a break, turned on the TV, saw the pix of SF and realized this wasn't some little local shaker! Our son (11 at the time) insisted on sleeping in a tent in the back yard for the next week.

One of the cats we had at the time became a predictor----took me a while to identify her odd behavior, but I started tracking it against the USGS map. She alerted us ahead of time to every major CA quake (including Northridge), and all the local ones 2.0+ till she died last year.

DP, I remember having to sit in a nasty smelling hole in the ground and waiting. Drove me crazy.
I'm glad I live in the country and not a city. Just think of all those glass projectiles! Shudder!
Just remember this is CA, we surf on the water and the land! LOL!
KC, I hope that your pictures didn't suffer any damage. I've gone through most of the house and earthquake proofed it, but there are still a couple of places. Nothing moved here, except our lips. "Hey did ya feel that?",
"Yeah, I wonder where it's epicenter was. The news is on, lets see what they have to say." I figured it was between a 4.5 and a 5 on the Richter scale but didn't know how far away it was. Makes a difference. Which reminds me to inquire if all the work trucks have earthquake kits. If a bad one hits, our guys could be cut off for weeks. Especially since some of their locations are along the length of the San Andreas fault. Talk to MIL about it.
I'm just glad we didn't get any broken pipes here. I'm amazed and grateful that no one was hurt.
Hope it stays that way for a while too!
WIB!
SW

Ahhh! How sweet, ima. I will tell you this, during the Northridge quake, I was holding my cat. I'll never do that again. Heard the hangers rattling in the closet. Was scary, but was more worried about the tasmanian devil I was holding. That poor cat was terrified.
None of my animals reacted in any way before or during the quake. No Church bells rang, (there aren't any around here), if anything, it was quieter than usual.
How bout the rest of you? Did your critters alert on the quake?
WIB,
SW

My new kitten is so noisy, I don't know if he alerted on the quake or some imaginary spider walking across the floor. LOL. I named him Donny for a reason. If any of you have ever seen the movie "The Big Lebowski" you'll know what I mean. It was John Goodman's character's favorite line in the movie. He repeated it dozens of times.

DP,
I'll have to watch the movie again. I seem to have "lost" it from my carbon based memory bank.
My bet is on the imaginary spider. LOL! ^_^
WIB,
SW