Not sure what’s up with the smileys, though.
No joke. Just trying to keep up with the rampant pedantry.
:rolleyes:
If I’d stood in the street in the '64 quake up here, I’d have likely been run over by our own (or a neighbor’s) car, or electrocuted by falling power lines. Bad advice.
That’s gotta be a whoosh, right? I mean, buildings fall down during earthquakes. Streets collapse. Standing in the street vs. relocating to outside the earthquake zone is a terrible idea.
Perhaps I misunderstood. Miller appears to be saying that you’re just as safe standing in the street as you are in moving away. Or was that sarcasm on his part?
I think it was a joke. Maybe I’m wrong. He’s a pretty sharp guy. How can standing in the street be as safe as being away from the quake altogether?
The Pitee said that she had overnight advance notice of an earthquake, and so she secured her valuables and went to bed. I commented that that was stupid, since the advance notice gave her time to get away. **Miller **then gave his response. Seemed like a joke to me.
Well if you’re in downtown SF, sure. But in suburban sprawl? Go out to your front yard. I missed the damn Loma Prieta because I was riding my bike at the time. And overpasses collapse, but streets really don’t.
They don’t get scared when I show it to them, just sad.
Well, mostly because earthquakes aren’t that dangerous. Faulty engineering, on the other hand, is a real killer. If you’re outside when an earthquake hits, generally speaking, you’re pretty safe. Obviously, this isn’t so much the case if you’re in the middle of downtown, or next to a busy street, but for the most part, so long as you don’t have any sort of structure hanging over your head, there’s not a lot of damage an earthquake can do to you.
OK, but, being 1000 miles away has to be safer, right?
It depends. 1000 miles away could be in Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. Despite rumors to the contrary, the coastal waters of California are generally pretty dang cold and hypothermia sets in quickly. But I’ve heard Taos is pretty safe.
Funny.
Not really. You’d probably be in more danger of wrecking your car during your flight, than of being harmed by the earthquake.
Well. I had no idea.
Keep in mind that earthquakes are hardly a rare occurance around here. We had one last week, while I was at work. I’d have gotten a bigger shake if someone had stood outside my cubicle and kicked the wall. I don’t mean to say that earthquakes are never a big deal: obviously, the bad ones can do a lot of damage. But the bad ones are extremly rare. If I somehow knew that a quake was going to hit tomorrow, but didn’t have any indication of severity… well, fleeing from that would be like fleeing from Florida because the weather guy said there’s a high pressure front coming. Most storms aren’t Hurricane Andrew. Most earthquakes aren’t Loma Prieta.