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

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.