--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Bhairitu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > TurquoiseB wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Alex Stanley" > > <j_alexander_stanley@> wrote: > > > >> --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "ispiritkin" <ispiritkin@> wrote: > >> > >>> I live a block and a half away from the train tracks and > >>> was awake at that time. I remember thinking, "That train > >>> sounds awfully big -- a mega-train -- but no matching > >>> mega-horn blast." > >>> > >> I'm bummed. I was fast asleep and missed out on experiencing > >> my very first earthquake. > > > > It's an experience. I was in Agadir, Morocco > > in 1960 when that earthquake hit. Only a 5.7 > > on the Richter scale, it managed to kill > > 15,000 people (1/3 of the town's population) > > in 15 seconds and leave 35,000 homeless. > > > > I watched the walls of a ten-story hotel fall > > away to the outside and the floors stack up > > like pancakes. I even got to see the real > > "wave" phenomenon of a big earthquake, a 3-4 > > foot high wave made of asphalt coming down the > > road at me as the wave from the quake lifted > > up the ground in its path. It lifted me up > > and knocked me about 10 feet away from where > > I had been standing. Fortunately neither I > > nor my best friend at the time were hurt (we > > were young, stupid, and lucky), and we were > > afraid of the possibility of related tsunamis, > > so we hopped into the small plane that he had > > flown down there in and took off and got the > > hell outa town. > > > > But the real horror of a big earthquake is > > afterwards -- no power, no water, no food, > > no shelter, and because it was Morocco, with > > thousands of years of refuse and bodies and > > history buried just outside of town and > > uncovered by the quake, disease. The good, > > old-fashioned plague hit within a few days. > > > > A big earthquake definitely shakes your belief > > in the notion of "terra firma," lemme tell you. > > Any of the California quakes I experienced > > later in life were mere "Milady's Friend" > > personal vibrators by comparison. > > IOW, they tell you who is "boss." :) The strongest quake I've > experienced since moving here has been in the 5s though a 4.x > hit last year about a mile away. Folks in the area who had been > through Loma Prieta in 1989 said the 4.x felt stronger.
It's just like real estate -- location, location location. Looking up facts on the Agadir quake yesterday so that no one would nitpick my ass off if I got the Richter level wrong :-), I discovered that the thing that made it so devas- tating was that it was a "shallow quake," mean- ing that it occurred close to the surface, as opposed to a fault shift deep below the ground. Also, it all depends on the nature of the earth that the waves have to travel through. In Cali- fornia and Japan and other countries along the "ring of fire," where quakes are frequent, the structure of the earth itself has become frac- tured by all the small quakes, with the result that the waves of a big quake don't travel as far as they would in an area with fewer quakes. I was working in NYC once when we started to feel an earthquake. Since I was on the 30th floor of an office building at the time, this was of some concern. :-) The company later sent out a memo saying that the building was meas- ured to have been swaying three feet from side to side at the top during the earthquake, which was taking place in *Nova Scotia*. On the East Coast, the ground is not as fractured from fre- quent quakes, so the effects of a large one can be felt -- and even do damage -- hundreds of miles away. So in a way, the Californians are the lucky ones. Obviously, given my experience at 15, I became a little fascinated by earthquakes, and looked up things about them ever since. The scariest thing I found ( which will be a real comfort to our California members :-) was that the BIG quakes in California happen on a very predictable 150-200 year cycle. By BIG they mean *really* BIG, not the slackers we've had in recent years. The last big one happened during the US Civil War. They didn't have the Richter scale back then, so they can't measure it by that, but they also measure the strength of earthquakes by how much the fault line in question shifted. In the recent San Francisco quake, the one that knocked down the freeway overpass, that fault line shifted 12 inches, and it was a minor fault. The last BIG quake happened along the San Andreas, which runs the entire length of California and the Northwest. During that quake, the fault line shifted *eight feet*. It knocked every existing building in California off its foundation, according to historical records. *That* is what "the big one" would be like. And it's overdue. So thank your lucky stars, you Californians, for all the small quakes. As long as they happen, perhaps "the big one" won't. > I was sitting watching a DVD > and this big bang like a train going through my living > room occured and I dropped to the floor for safety. I > experience lots of 1's all the time around here and > they're never listed but they will shake a little. > Nothing like the fun of living in a seismic area. It teaches one non-attachment. Heck, it can teach your whole *house* non-attachment. :-)
