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I've lived in the Bay Area all my life, was a baby when Loma Prieta hit. I had scarcely felt an earthquake in my life except for a few occasions where I had to

I've lived in the Bay Area all my life, was a baby when Loma Prieta hit. I had scarcely felt an earthquake in my life except for a few occasions where I had to ask people nearby 'was that just an earthquake?'. A month or two ago there was an earthquake epicentered a 5 minute walk from my house. It shook my house and wobbled my walls and I thought for sure it was finally the big one. I find out the next day that it was only around a 4.0. It's hard to imagine what the epicenter of a 7.0 (>30k times as powerful) would feel like.

KirinDave 9y ago
I was a tween when LP hit. I remember my TV shooting out of of an 8 foot tall entertainment cabinet and taking the whole thing down with it inside. Outside, I watched our 3 acres of squared off of ranch fencing visibly ripple and distort as the waves passed through. More than one window shattered, and our well (I lived in a remote area) actually was stressed so that it collapsed. We were lucky we only lost power for a week. People further up in the mountains didn't have it for over a month.
DrScump 9y ago
Aside from the lessened intensity of the main shock, distance saves you from even feeling many of the aftershocks. During LP, my then-pregnant sister lived in Aptos less than one mile from the epicenter. They were getting meaningful aftershocks by the dozens through the evening. The surface waves were amazing directional. I was at work when it hit, and we had those suspended, noise-absorbing foam panels in the ceiling... and you could see the rippling of the surface wave propagate along the ceiling. Those bookshelves/cabinets, dressers and other tallish rectangular objects that were perpendicular to the wave fell over; those parallel to it tended to be fine. Almost everywhere along El Camino from Menlo to the Sunnyvale border had power outages, with one exception: a half-block of El Camino just "north" of Grant. Yet that half-block just happened to have a gas station and a 24-hour restaurant (where Los Charros is now) that remained up and running throughout.

KirinDave 9y ago

I was a tween when LP hit. I remember my TV shooting out of of an 8 foot tall entertainment cabinet and taking the whole thing down with it inside. Outside, I watched our 3 acres of squared off of ranch fencing visibly ripple and distort as the waves passed through. More than one window shattered, and our well (I lived in a remote area) actually was stressed so that it collapsed. We were lucky we only lost power for a week. People further up in the mountains didn't have it for over a month.

DrScump 9y ago

Aside from the lessened intensity of the main shock, distance saves you from even feeling many of the aftershocks. During LP, my then-pregnant sister lived in Aptos less than one mile from the epicenter. They were getting meaningful aftershocks by the dozens through the evening. The surface waves were amazing directional. I was at work when it hit, and we had those suspended, noise-absorbing foam panels in the ceiling... and you could see the rippling of the surface wave propagate along the ceiling. Those bookshelves/cabinets, dressers and other tallish rectangular objects that were perpendicular to the wave fell over; those parallel to it tended to be fine. Almost everywhere along El Camino from Menlo to the Sunnyvale border had power outages, with one exception: a half-block of El Camino just "north" of Grant. Yet that half-block just happened to have a gas station and a 24-hour restaurant (where Los Charros is now) that remained up and running throughout.