quake report

[firecat]

At 8:04 PM I was sitting in an Una Mas restaurant in Redwood City with jwermont, waiting for our food.

firecat [*thinking*]: "jwermont is tapping her foot really hard."
jwermont [*thinking I'm tapping my foot*]: "Either you're very impatient for your food or we're having an earthquake."
firecat [*watching the wall ripple*]: "We're having an earthquake."
Other people in the restaurant: [*Looking up alertly like a bunch of meerkats*]

I tried to use my cell phone to send a text message so I would remember the time, but the message failed multiple times. That worried me—where I was, the quake wasn't so strong, but it lasted a long time, and I didn't know but maybe it was on the Hayward fault.

So when we got home we went to the computer and looked up the quake on usgs.gov. Fortunately it turned out not to be too serious.

Overall not nearly as exciting as the Loma Prieta quake (I was in a swimming pool in Cupertino at the time). Thank goodness.

Comments

[theycallmebeth.livejournal.com]

I don't know if I could stay calm if the walls started rippling. I've never experienced anything like that and we don't get much of that kind of activity up here. It would totally freak me out!

[firecat]

I wouldn't say I was calm when the walls started rippling, but I didn't panic because I've been in a big earthquake and could tell this was a small one, at least in the location I was.

When I first came to SF as a tourist, I went to the California Academy of Sciences where they had an "earthquake table", a platform you could stand on that mimicked the way the 1906 earthquake felt. I stood on it and it felt "fake" to me.

Then a year or so after the Loma Prieta quake, which I experienced, I went back there and stood on it again. That time it felt real and I was scared!