Last night's earthquake in Southern California was intense, if even only for a few seconds. Having been a long time California resident, I have lived through plenty of seismic seizures, but the ground shaking that we experienced last night made me jump six feet high off the couch.
The quakes that I am familiar with are rolling ones, where the ground takes on a kind of wavy, ripple feel and then stops. But, as I was laying there last night watching the Survivor finale, I heard a sudden and loud, very loud BOOM, which brought all of my senses to the surface. Then, the shaking started and a couple of things began to fall. I could hear the rattling of dishes, and a sound like the house was separating or tearing apart. It was noisy.
RJ ran out of the downstairs bathroom where he had been laying tile and I jumped up yelling, "downstairs, you need to come downstairs" to my kids who were upstairs in their rooms. Realizing that the dining room table would not accommodate four adults and four dogs, I yelled again, "outside, get outside" which is the worse advice you can give anyone. By this time, it was over.
My son, his dog and RJ were already outside and I was yelling for my daughter to come downstairs, as I know that aftershocks are common. She came to the top of the stairs, a little perturbed and asked why she needed to come downstairs. I told her that there may be aftershocks and she brushed me off like I was a over reacting. She returned to her room.
Outside the neighbors were gathering and we heard that it was only a 4.7 but centered only a couple of miles away along the Newport-Inglewood fault which runs right through our area. Elderly neighbors were checked to ensure that they were okay and then we all began to exchange stories. I couldn't get over the noise of this quake which for those few seconds sounded like bombs dropping. This seemed to be the one thing that had everyone jittery, along with the way it shook instead of rolled.
Apparently there were several aftershocks which none of us seemed to feel. I went through the house and picked up things that had fallen, straightened pictures and my son swept up our one casualty, a Marine Corps figurine that my Dad had put on the wall shelf in his bedroom.
I guess we can all be thankful that this quake only measured 4.7 on the Richter Scale since it was centered so close. I am also thankful that when we added on to our house we used steel I beams and earthquake straps. I still remember the comment made by one of the city building inspectors who told us, "if there is ever a big earthquake, I would want to be in a house like yours!" That's a blessing.
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