Some earth quakes are rollers and can be slightly unnerving but not bad. Others feel like a truck hit your building with a loud boom, over before you know it. The ones I find worst are the long drawn out shakers, they will make you feel like your building may collapse. If one lasts for more than about 5 seconds I will start timing them, a 30 second earthquake seems to last forever.
Just a tiny one, in Illinois, about 4:30 in the morning. My bed started shaking. It was just a little, but enough to wake me up. II remember thinking, “I wonder if this is an earthquake?” And then going back to sleep.
I bet it was the same one HeyHomie mentioned. I must have the time wrong.
Two
This one when I lived in northern MD.
It was mild, just a little bit of shaking. I remember it as being noisy but I could be remembering it wrong.
http://www.homefacts.com/earthquakes/Pennsylvania/Chester-County/West-Nottingham-Township/pde199610171143279805.html
and
The big one on the East Coast from a few years back.
At first I thought it was the wind, then I thought it was a big truck driving down the street. When I yelled at my son for doing jumping jacks in the house, that is when he came running and said he thought it was an earthquake. It was very quiet. though which makes me wonder if the first one was noisy like I remember.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/earthquake-rattles-washington-area/2011/08/23/gIQATMOGZJ_story.html
I was living in Salt Lake City in the 1980s, literally atop a fault (one block away was Fault Line Park. The ground had shifted vertically very severely, and created a hill so steep that I couldn’t make it up on my bike. In winter, cars sometimes had trouble climbing it if it had snow or ice), although I was told that that one was inactive. There were, nevertheless, plenty of other faults that were active around.
I was awakened during the night by the sound of the metal fire escape banking against the building. My first thought was “what idiot is trying to climb up the fire escape?” It wasn’t until the sleep fuzziness cleared that I realized I’d been through the one and only earthquake I ever felt effects of.
Lived in CA most of life, so yeah, I’ve been in lots. The first one was quite a shock, though, as I grew up in New England and had never felt one before. Like JL, above, I live fairly close to the epicenter of the Loma Prieta quake of 1989 and that was a doozie. Almost as bad (psychologically) were the many aftershocks that hit in the following weeks. Four house on my block had to be demolished after that one, although you could have predicted this in advance since they were older homes not bolted to their foundations properly.
All earthquakes are pretty much the same, consisting of primary and secondary waves. The primary wave is the shock wave, the secondary are the “rollers”. Depending on intensity, you may not feel one or the other, but they’re there all the same.
Yes, the 2011 Virginia one. I remember first thinking there was a train passing by, because the walls were shaking and it made a fairly loud noise. Then I realized that 1) there were no train tracks nearby and 2) trains do not make the floor shift underneath you. So I concluded we were having an earthquake. I was in an office with a California native who told me that based on her experience, it was no weenie earthquake, either, so I didn’t feel too bad about being somewhat frightened. It was not a pleasant experience.
Having lived in Southern California or over 20 years, I have experienced lots. Particularly memorable were the Landers and Big Bear quakes (1992), independent quakes only a few hours apart, and both strong enough to knock stuff off shelves in my girlfriend’s apartment, and in mine.
Northridge was even stronger, and my cousin from England, who was a journalist on a construction industry trade journal at the time, came over to see the aftereffects. My wife and I gave him a tour round the affected areas. In most places, even quite close to the epicenter, there was little obvious sign of damage except for the fact that many, many people’s front yard walls seemed to have collapsed, but every so often we would come across a spectacularly pancaked building amongst others that seemed fine. However, my wife’s best friend had to move out of her apartment in Tarzana (quite close to Northridge) shortly afterwards. Even though the building looked fine after the quake, it was determined that there was structural damage, and it had to be demolished.
My first earthquake was when I was in highschool. I thought the washing machine was off balance, and shaking the house.
I experienced this one as well, we felt it in northeast Indiana. I remember feeling my bed shake and thinking I was either dreaming or it was an earthquake. Then I told myself I must be dreaming because we don’t get earthquakes in Indiana.
There was this one, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Indiana_earthquake. I was driving to work when this one hit, so I heard it rather than felt it. I was on a road with some large trucks and heard an odd noise. I just assumed it was one of the trucks. When I got to work I had a text from my sister asking if I felt the earthquake.
I remember a third earthquake as well, but I’m not sure when it was. I was elementary-school age, and I was spending the night at my Grandma’s house. I woke up to some strange noises, I just figured it was old-house creaky noises. When I got up the next day Grandma said we’d had an earthquake during the night.
We had one in Memphis when I was a child. My family was having dinner and my papaw smacked me on the head and told me to stop shaking the table. Around the time I protested my brother pointed outside the back door and we saw the (electric?phone?) wires shaking.
Papaw said, “It’s a goddamn earthquake” and then boom, it was over. We all went in to the living room and the local news casters were a little bit shaken up (snerk) about it, but I don’t think there was much damage or any injuries. The interwebs say it was a 5.0.
I can still remember it almost 40 years later like it was yesterday! There’s no other feeling in the world.
I was in Santa Cruz, CA, working in a sport car shop. I was doing a tune up on an Austin-Healy when I felt the floor move under my feet. (The floor, not the earth) I believe I saw a wave in the concrete floor. Scared the hell out of me.
No, I did. Sorry. 4:37 AM Central Daylight Time.
I was in middle school in 1971 when the Sylmar quake happened, but I didn’t realize what it was. I thought someone or something was making my bedroom windows rattle. The fact is, living in the granite hills between the Basin and the San Fernando Valley spares you a lot of the shaking and damage that earthquakes can cause.
When the Northridge quake hit in 1994, I was living in a ground floor apartment in West L.A., and I definitely knew that was an earthquake, no question. I thought the building was going to collapse, though it didn’t, and I really didn’t have much of anything break. Of course the power went out, and I remember the difficult tiime I had negotiating the pitch dark hallway, where a tall bookcase had tipped against the opposite wall and spilled its contents all over the floor. I made it out to my car, where I got the news on the radio.
Oh yeah: I was on vacation that week, and was supposed to take my car in later that week to have the wheels realigned. I actually called them up to confirm the time, not realizing the extent of what had happened.
Of course there have been many others, but if it isn’t 6.0 or better (“better”?) they barely register with me.
This is the first quake I remember.
My family was in the process of moving and we were living in out primitive summer cabin in Vermont. It sounded like a bunch of men on the roof.
Living along the New Madrid fault, I feel a small quake about every two years or so. The Illinois Quake of 2008 was enough to wake me and check the USGS website. And it was about 150 miles away.
Only one earthquake for me – the east coast/DC one from a few years ago. I was at work, and I remember having to walk about 2 miles to find my wife (also at work), and we miraculously happened to stumble into each other on the National Mall.
There was a 5.2 in Cincinnati when I was living there in 1980; oddest feeling ever. I was washing dishes in the middle of the afternoon, felt this odd thing, and looked up to see the pans rattling on the pot rack. I shouted out to the SO, “Hey, we’re having an earthquake!” It was all over very quickly.
I have felt inconsequentially small earthquakes in Boston and San Francisco, and moderate quakes in both Jakarta and Hawaii.
There was a 5.4 quake on the Big Island that lasted maybe 30-45 seconds when I was alone in the house with my son, who was about 5 at the time. I was standing closer to the door than he was. I know I didn’t bolt without him - we exited together. I do remember telling him, “Run! Get outside!”* whereas I don’t specifically remember running over and grabbing him. I hope I did…
The coolest quake (I think I’ve mentioned this one before) was when our big Javanese gongs picked up the quake energy and started ringing - very eerie. That time I also had the presence of mind to go check the pool while it was still reverberating from the quake. THAT was really neat - the waves don’t look anything like ordinary pool splashing.
The scariest quake occurred when I was on the 32nd floor of a building and we were all attempting to exit down the steps. All the cute little Indonesian women in their high heels couldn’t negotiate the steps very fast. I badly wanted to push them out of the way, but I thought that would be incredibly rude. So I crept down the steps at a snail’s pace, all the while thinking “great, I’m going to die because I’m too polite.”
*Yes, I know that “run like hell and get outside” is NOT the recommended strategy. But that house is on stilts and of rather flimsy construction, whereas outside was rural and free of things that could fall on us.
I was working in a newish office building that was nowhere near to full occupancy. On the floor above us, they were building out offices for a new client. They had this huge metal bin that they used for refuse, and from time to time, they would move it from one location to another by dragging or pushing it over the concrete floor. This caused a considerable amount of noise in our office.
So when the 5.7 struck in Pasadena (or near there, I think), about 30 miles away, in October of 1987, that’s what I thought it was – rumble, rumble. When it didn’t stop in a few seconds, I finally realized what it really was. Being a newbie to earthquakes, I didn’t know what to do. (I had a huge, heavy desk, so I should have huddled under there.) One of my co-workers had used the stairs once a few weeks before and had not been able to get out of the building or out of the stairwell on our floor, so my first thought of leaving the building died before I could take any action.
About a month before the quake, people arriving at the building on a Monday morning saw a huge pile of shattered glass, and about 8 stories above the glass, we could see that a giant pane of glass was missing. When my manager arrived at work a few minutes after the temblors had subsided, he saw dozens of people standing just outside the overhang (the first floor of the building was inset about ten feet all around the building) – they were watching the building sway, since the buildings in California are built loose to absorb shocks. When he reminded them of the shattered pane and the increased probability that that might happen as a result of the quake, they all decided they had better things to do.
For the rest of the day, I could hear movement inside the walls as the building continued to sway.
August 9, 1979. I had moved to the SF area from Chicago less than 2 months earlier. My reactions in order:
- What the hell is that?
- Oh, this must be an earthquake. How interesting.
- Uh-oh. this isn’t stopping! (Then I froze.)
- Oh God, have mercy on me! (Yes, I literally said my prayers!)
The quake was only (!) 5.7, and there were no injuries or substantial damage. But there had not been one felt in SF that strong since 1911.
I lived there for a number of years and experienced a few more quakes, including the quake of '89.