When the recent earthquake in Christchurch, NZ occurred I immediately contacted a friend of mine whose husband is a Kiwi and still has lots of family down there. At the tail end of our conversation she reminded me of the earthquake that occurred 10 years ago on the West Coast of North America.
The Nisqually Earthquake hit at 10:54am on Feb. 28, 2001. In the minutes before I happened to be in my 12th Floor Vancouver apartment, talking on the phone with one of my colleagues, who was over at our office in Victoria. The shock wave hit there first so I had about 10 seconds to prepare before it arrived in Vancouver. That was the LONGEST 10 SECONDS of my life!!!
Here are some more personal stories from that day, here is what it looked like inside of Microsoft in Redmond, WA when the quake hit, and here’s a fairly comprehensive video about the event and its after effects.
If you’ve ever been in the midst of a large scale natural event, please do share your story!
Thanks for the reminder Robert. I was in my office on Burrard Street that day and it was the first time that I felt an earthquake in Vancouver. Initially I was wondering whether it was a vestibular hallucination but then the obvious shaking of the building dispelled that hypothesis relatively quickly. My primary thoughts were of whether I should head down the stairs NOW or wait. Nothing got knocked off my office shelves but there were some fairly rattled patients in the waiting room. Also wondered whether I should wait for aftershocks outside but then figured that the risk of crossing Burrard street was likely greater than that of staying put and just continued on with my day.
I believe some chunks of the old portion of St. Pauls did fall off in that quake and it made me wonder about the wisdom of placing the emergency department in the least seismically stable portion of the hospital. IIRC, the West End of Vancouver is the best place to be when the big one hits and Richmond is a place you definitely don’t want to be.
loki
I grew up in extremely tectonically stable Southern Ontario, where the only groundshocks were from quarry blasting.
Indonesia gave me an ominous welcome.
It must be a cultural thing but the locals who should have been accustomed to this reacted badly…fleeing buildings and running into traffic.
An associate who resides in Taiwan reports similar behaviour.
Our theory is these are survivors of early, big shocks…a form of PSTD.
Funny thing is the same people will reside on a dormant(?) volcano…..go figure….
It seems the effect of ground shocks increase with the proximity of bedrock. It seems that over-burden absorbs some of the shock.
I was in my office on the second floor of a building in Silicon Valley when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit in October 1989. I did the rational thing – I ran down the stairs screaming and ran out of the building through the emergency door. About fifteen minutes later, a security guy came around to the group of us standing in the parking lot wanting to know who had used the emergency door without permission. His belief was that nothing was an emergency until security told us that it was an amergency.
I was in a Los Angeles hotel in Oct/86 when, in the wee hours of the night, a 7+ earthquake hit. Shaken out of bed, I ran to the balcony to see what was happening and was absolutely stunned as I watched the parking lot move like an ocean wave. I wasn’t the least bit afraid as I was so amazed by the sight. That came to an end abruptly, however, when, from the balcony beside me, a Rastafarian fellow poked his head around the divider. He truly scared the shit out of me.
We had an earthquake in Ontario here the other day. The best indicator was the clothes in the closet moving. I could see how if it was much stronger the house would probably fall down from the whipping action. As it was, the bricks didn’t even crack.
On the other hand, the Grand River flooded two years ago, -that- was pretty scary. I’m right up the road from it. You don’t really get it about floods until you see the water a foot below the bottom of a bridge that’s normally 20 feet out of the water.
Water doesn’t slow down for anything, either. Just keeps coming…
video here
http://newzeal.blogspot.com/2011/02/christchurch-after-big-shake.html
If you live in Ontario you get a lot of earthquakes – but they aren’t plates shifting . . just isostatic adjustment/rebound still happening from the last ice expansion.
I experience an earthquake every Friday night, usually by my second martini. Unfortunately, the aftershocks on Saturday morning can be devastating.
I was in Anchorage in 1964.
It went on for 5 minutes.
I was working at the Montauban Gold Mine at the time of the magnitude 6 Chicoutimi earthquake. Liquid slurry tailings from the old mine were stored in the uppermost parts of the old mine working areas. The quake broke the structural supports for the tailings impoundment, sending slurry slippery tails down the ramp at quite a tremendous speed. The crew on shift at the time dropped everything and started to run when the tremors hit, before they were hit with tailings. All managed to climb onto the jumbo (4-boom underground drilling machine) and the volume of tailings was thankfully not sufficient to submerge the jumbo at the bottom of the ramp.
The mine rescue team had quite a time getting the miners out, as the tailings had turned the ramp into a 14% skating rink.
No fatalities, minor injuries. Things were back to normal after a few days of cleanup.
The mine rescue team had quite