This is why engineering in CA corresponds to your local engineering in FL where it's meant to withstand high wind loads. In the 1933 earthquake here in Long Beach there were a lot of wood framed houses with clapboard siding, framed house with stucco and many unreinforced masonry buildings, all or in part. It was the bricks that came down everywhere.

Therefore, our codes are big on tying things down and to each other, not so different than bracing for a hurricane. But we may have heavier foundation requirements. I know our high rises start with foundation elements drilled and dug down pretty deep. Below street level underground parking makes sense in more ways than one in that there is a massive structure hollow enough to provide parking but strong enough to carry something sticking up in the air and hold it just tight enough. Some are on shock absorbers and some are on a sot of a short gliding system. I'm not an engineer nor an architect, so that's the layman's POV.

Interesting and certainly makes sense.

I'd agree with that

Very unsettling experience, with my 1st earthquake in Italy some primal instinct inside me knew exactly what was happening even when I was woken from a deep sleep

I'd add an avalanche to that drive by menu

Felt nothing here in North County San Diego.

I was in Tokyo for the big quake, in the bus heading to Narita. We pulled out of the hotel entrance and at the first light in front of Starbucks it hit. I was stranded there for 24 hours...managed to find operating transport to Narita for the next day departure. Plane was at 10% capacity...most could not get there for the flight.

Growing up in SoCal I have lived through a few memorable quakes. The Japan quake was very different. Many hours after the initial big hit the ground was still moving. We were stranded in the bus terminal (T-CAT) the night of and the coat hangers never stopped moving. I headed to a Japanese equivalent of 7-11 for some beer, sushi, and chips and made it a party in the middle of the terminal. I was not aware of the loss of life far North due to Tsunami...so sad.

We were sitting in a movie and didn't notice anything. The 7.3 in Mexicali about ten years ago shook us pretty hard but didn't do anything to our house. We were outside at the time, and I had time to run around the back to see the French doors moving in & out. These pics are from the June 1952 Tehachapi earthquake where I lived & was about ten at the time. Killed eleven people in a town of less than 2K. The second pic is a collapsed half million gallon water tank next to the railroad tracks that supplied the steam engines. It was a really scary experience.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1562290402.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1562290439.jpg

I can handle ice, deep snow, straight line wind and thugs but a rolling ground…I would soil myself.

Yeah I’ll take the tornados. At least they can forecast those. I like Paul’s nature drive by analogy. That’s scary stuff.

I dunno. I’ve had a few close calls with twisters, including minor property damage. The sound they made as passed (close) by during the middle of the night is nothing I’d want to experience again.

I don't think I've felt a quake since 1985 when I left Japan. There it seemed like they happened almost constantly, but were very small (mostly). Both times (1978-80 and 83-85) we lived in housing that had been built just after WWII. The only issue that we ever had was when a big one hit the first time and dumped all of my parents' wedding china out of the cabinets and onto the floor of the kitchen.

Shop complex guy here was at his son's house in Ridgecrest during the earthquake.

He said when the big tremor hit he was holding his son's entertainment setup against the wall so it would not fall. Stuff was falling big time in the house.

He checked the gas meter and it was not moving (good, right?) but two neighborhood houses were on fire.

He was genuinely afraid.

Spoke to one of my friends who lives in Ridgecrest and works at NAS China Lake (prior USMC Cobra pilot): "The base is a yard sale."

Ridgecrest had a 5.4 aftershock this morning @ 4am, I happened to be up for a moment laying in bed and it shook my building very noticeably. I did not feel the bigger one yesterday, I may have been driving?

Most quakes, unless they are very large and close, require one to be sitting quietly or laying in bed to be noticed. If you are out moving around, they are too subtle. I'll take California's earthquakes over tornadoes and schit weather any day but YMMV.

In fact, we need a good shaker here about now. It's been too long. I don't want anyone to die, I just want them to schit in their pants and leave.

At anywhere near the epicenter of yesterday's quake, I'm sure it was terrifying. Don't get me wrong, they are scary. I was woken up by the Northridge quake in '94 and it sounded and felt like a freight train was going through the living room. My brother was at Stanford in '89 when the big one hit up there, playing basketball outdoors and it knocked everyone off their feet.

Maybe 25 years ago there was an earthquake centered off the coast of Newport Beach while I was driving nearby. I wouldn't have known a thing if the radio didn't report on it. But yesterday I was sitting eating a late breakfast when it started.

I used to have long talks with an old man, now passed, who lived in Long Beach the day of the '33 quake that was "the big one." It struck in the early evening with a lot of folks having left their place of business for the day. The old gent told me he was out on the sidewalk on his roller skated when he was knocked on his ass. From his perspective sitting on the ground he could see the sidewalk looking down the street undulating like a set of small ocean waves.

This was the result in LB:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...8209967%29.jpg

My family moved from Anchorage to New Hampshire in 1963. All my buddies that I left behind had some wild tails to write about on Good Friday the next year. I am glad I missed that one.

The pic I am showing has Earthquake Park in it. It's covered with trees but to go into it and walk towards the water from the visitors center the ground is undulated. Hill, valley, hill, valley but only about 6-10 feet tall but a high frequency of hills, like an accordion bellows.

My house (1980's) was where the arrow is. Lowell Thomas' (for the old guys) house was on the Cook Inlet where the oval is roughed out. The ground liquefied and carried his house with two kids and maybe the housekeeper into the sea to their doom. The epicenter was hundreds (edit - oops 75 miles away I was thinking driving time) of miles away. 9.2

Second pic is just for perspective of Anchorage. Elmendorf AFB is in the upper right.

This thing was so huge the tsunami damaged Hawaii. 2nd largest recorded earthquake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alaska_earthquake

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1562356949.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1562356995.jpg

FWIW I was watching the world series in Anchorage in my boss' office in 1989 when that bad boy hit.

I walked out in Earthquake Park in June years ago... was almost carried off by flocks of mosquitoes the size of crows.

BTW, was that Lowell Thomas' house or his son's house; (Lowell Thomas Jr.) who lived in Alaska most of his later life. Son was a Senator and Lt. Gov., I think. Don't recall the father living there.

It was the old man based on my memory but I'll confirm. Jr lived close to me as well but never met him.

Now I gotta get my search on.

Edit:

You are correct. Thanks.

It's Lowell Thomas Jr. The old man was born in 1892. Timing is way off for young kids.

https://www.adn.com/our-alaska/article/march-27-1964-day-earth-fell-pieces-one-anchorage-family/2014/03/23/

Another big one...8:21 pm.