California folks - y'all okay?

Just checking on everyone.

Audrey and I are fine.  That would mean Keeper should be fine, also. Is there something in the news?

Edit: Okay, I'm watching the news and see that the Bay Area (North of San Francisco specifically) was hit by a hard earth quake. Jolts and waves. That would affect Mazzy (East Bay), and possibly Yardslave (So of Bay Area but still near the long coastal fault lines zone). Daughter moved from the quake area a month or so ago!! Talk about timing.   

I didn't feel it in the middle of the night because Fresno is in the Central Valley which is like a bowl of jello between 2 mountain ranges. Audrey is in the foot hills of the inner Sierra Mts. Yardslave is in the Coastal Mts area.

Unless you have the luck of the draw to be in a particularly bad spot at the time -- like somewhere that pipes broke or power went out or a freeway overpass got damaged -- Californians tend to shrug off most quakes. When I lived there for almost 30 years, I wouldn't even get out of bed for most of them. Occasionally I would get under a door frame or desk if things got really bad, but mostly I either ignored quakes or quickly turned off or unplugged running appliances so they wouldn't get zapped by a power surge.

Of course, there is the rare person who gets hurt, and occasionally someone especially unlucky has some property damage, but considering the massive number of quakes throughout California every year, I found it hard to get very excited about them. Sometimes when you're in a car you can't even feel them.

Hope nobody was one of the unlucky ones this time.

Late last year, there was one in SC that we felt in Atlanta.  I had just gone to bed when it came thru.  Got up quickly!!!  DH asked if I felt it too.  We decided that it must have been a quake.  Newsies confirmed it a few moments later.

First one I've ever felt.  Very disconcerting...

Earthquakes are interesting - they generally have a very small serious impact area, even as small as a few miles across.  Then even though they might be felt two hours drive away it isn't damaging.

We live in an area that doesn't have earthquakes though they are possible if there are undiscovered fault lines or "dormant" faults that wake up.  I haven't felt a single tremor since we moved here in 2003.  So all's well at our home.  

I felt a couple of 6.0s when living in San Diego - they will definitely get your attention.

Audrey, A 6.0?     I like Marie's description of "disconcerting."

Marc, I have a cartoon regarding earthquakes but it's boxed up, somewhere. Office scene, office workers running all over the place, one man calmly sitting at his desk doing his work. Caption: Guess who is the Californian.

For those who are interested: Bing "map California fault lines." The second photo shows a large white area running up the center NNW to SSE. This is the bowl of jello or sedimentary fill from the erosion of the western coastal and eastern Sierra mountain ranges. This is the big bowl of jello to which I keep referring. We just shimmy. This white area is also the 'bread basket' of the US. Audrey is in the lower western Sierra foothills. The Mammoth fault line is all the way over the mountains on the eastern slope. So we are in good locations.

Marc Iverson wrote:Unless you have the luck of the draw to be in a particularly bad spot at the time -- like somewhere that pipes broke or power went out or a freeway overpass got damaged -- Californians tend to shrug off most quakes.  When I lived there for almost 30 years, I wouldn't even get out of bed for most of them.  Occasionally I would get under a door frame or desk if things got really bad, but mostly I either ignored quakes or quickly turned off or unplugged running appliances so they wouldn't get zapped by a power surge.

Of course, there is the rare person who gets hurt, and occasionally someone especially unlucky has some property damage, but considering the massive number of quakes throughout California every year, I found it hard to get very excited about them.  Sometimes when you're in a car you can't even feel them.

Hope nobody was one of the unlucky ones this time.

I echo Marc's hopes.  I can also vouch for his comments.  Having grown up in Los Angeles...  I never got out of bed for an earthquake EXCEPT the Northridge/North Hills earthquake in 1994.  I pulled my legs up in a "knee jerk" reaction as I bolted up from a deep sleep..  and then immediately heard a loud crash of something hitting my bed.  It ended up being a heavy book case full of huge text books.  If I hadn't pulled up my legs... they would have been broken for sure.

For some reason...  the tornado storms of the south a more terrifying to us.  There are more of them and they are so ominous.  My wife says, "Well, with an earthquake, its over in an instant.  Here we sit and watch the storms slowly approach and we get ourselves all worked up."  I guess the only thing that makes a tornado storm better is that you can sort of predict them.

Really, there is no such thing as a "better" natural disaster is there?  I guess the only difference is what you are more used to.