How often do you deal with Earthquakes?

[LinusBlueSnow]

Ok, I was in my Earth Space Science class learning (and relearning) and taking down notes for a lecture on the lithosphere and earthquake intensities and diferrent types and areas that they occur in, both the country and the world, which gave me the idea to make this poll: How often do you deal with Earthquakes? Who here has experienced or been in an earthquake and deals with them frequently?

 

[Pojo]

Maybe once or twice in my life. None were that big.

 

[guyinthebox]

well i live in CA so we get them frequently, last one i could feel was like a 5.0 i think, about a month ago. i don't really remember the one before that... i guess you just get use to them. only the big ones stand out. me personally i like them, everything's shaking and everyone stops what their doing and looks around hoping their not the only one that felt that. kind of hilarious. course it can be scary when things start to fall, but CA has some pretty good building regulations so that doesn't happen all too often.

 

[Darkfinn]

What's an earthquake?

Just like a tornado or a hurricane... it's mother nature's way of saying "You shouldn't live here!"

 

[chevre]

I experienced one earthquake (plus the aftershock). There was an earthquake that hit Illinois ( 2008 Illinois earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ), and I felt it in western Indiana where I was at the time.

It was pretty bizarre. The quake came early in the morning, while I was still in bed. I'm not sure if it woke me up or I just happened to be awake, but I felt like the whole building was rocking. It wasn't like the shaking kind you see in movies with stuff falling over (I know those really do happen). It was sort of like someone standing at the foot of my bed rocking it forward and back.

It couldn't have lasted more than like 30 seconds, and afteward I was sure it was imagination, so I just went back to sleep. When I woke up and got out of bed, I had an email waiting from my dad asking if I felt the earthquake. Then I knew it wasn't my imagination . Later that day I felt the aftershock on campus during a meeting.

It was pretty weak in the overall earthquake spectrum, but it was cool nonetheless. I don't think there were any injuries or property damage in my area as a result. Then I went and filled out a survey for the USGS. All in all, it wasn't a bad day haha.

 

[angelabauer]

Like so many others, I grew up in Southern California, where earthquakes are routine.

The first major quake I remember was "Sylmar" in February 1971. My family was at home in Bellflower, a city just south of Los Angeles. All us kids were still asleep when the quake started before dawn. I was only 6 and did not wake up until the shaking was over. Although that was a large quake, the epicenter was about 30 miles north of us. There was hardly any damage to our home or neighborhood, but in other places there was destruction.

By coincidence I was on assignment in San Francisco during a big quake. The World Series was being played there and was delayed a week. We all felt that shaking in the office building.

By another lucky coincidence I had taken a red-eye flight to NYC a few hours before the "Northridge" Earthquake of January 1994. That epicenter was less than a mile from my former apartment. Friends were injured. Later I saw pictures of that building squished badly. Lucky for us Don and I owned a home in Pasadena which was not damaged in any way.

About a month ago there was a 5.0 or so quake. Don and I felt it, but it did no damage to our house and was not very destructive elsewhere. My folks still live in the same house in Bellflower, which was closer to the epicenter. Lucky that quake was especially deep.

 

[mooster]

None of us in the San Francisco Bay area at that time can ever forget the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 that happened during the World Series at Candlestick Park. Oh my lord that was a really big one...scared the heck outta me when it happened after work...

 

[Peachy]

The only earthquake we ever had in my part of the country happened when I was like 13 or 14...and right at the time it happened, my family was away on vacation in Italy. So I've never been in one.

Peachy

 

[Lightning]

A few years ago we had a very small earthquake close to us. Unfortunately, it was so small we didn't feel a thing.

 

[Fire2box]

I never expe... freaking damn it.

Damn California fault lines!

Also every place on earth seems to has it's own natural disasters. California has earthquakes (not very big ones most of the time) and fires. The midwest has tornadoes, the gulf coast/eastern seaboard has hurricanes. The mountain areas have blizzards the desert's have flash floods and incredibly hot summers. Oregon has landslides and Washington has constant rain. Alaska has it's share of problems even without big events, Hawaii is a freaking ACTIVE volcano.

So by darkfinn's standards. Were all doomed.

 

[TallestBabyEver]

one, when i was overseas in South Korea. Not intense at all, was more like a murmer.

These days i have to put up with Tornado threats, and with no garage im freakin paranoid of debris and hail XD

 

[Pramrider]

I experienced one small, short duration tremor back in Spring of 1984. We lived in a trailer park next to a heavily used (by trucks) highway. I suddenly felt our mobile home shaking and thought it was a real heavy truck bouncing up the highway. I found out the next day it had been an earthquake centered near Wilmington, Delaware, which was only about 35 or so miles NE from where we were living.

~Pramrider

 

[checkingoutall]

It's hard to believe, but we have had a few minor quakes here in Southern Indiana. They scared some people, but for me, they were so little I didn't blink an eye. I have worked in some factories that the equipment they use causes the building to shake, and our quakes to me were no more than that.

 

[EmeraldsAndLime]

Funnily enough, I just completed my earth science / geology exam this morning.

To answer the question, never. Australia is close to the middle of the Australian plate, so we are far away from the plate boundaries, which is where earthquakes occur.

one, when i was overseas in South Korea. Not intense at all, was more like a murmer.

I'll make a trivial point of it now, because news reporters always get it wrong. Earthquake intensity is different from earthquake magnitude.

The magnitude of an EQ is the amount of energy it released. It's a quantitative value that is measured using the Richter scale.

The intensity of an EQ is the amount of damage it causes to buildings and people. It's a qualitative value that is measured using the modified Mercalli scale.


Therefore, you can have an EQ with a large magnitude, but low intensity, such as desert regions or the deep ocean floor.

Or you can have an EQ with a low magnitude, but high intensity, such as population centres like Tokyo or California.

 

[Ace]

I can remember two, and that's a bit since I'm in New York. Last time was a few years back and I was in college living in the dorms. It happened in the morning and at first I woke up thinking that my roommate was... well... you know... with the girl he was with. But then I realized the room shaking and things falling off the shelf and my own bed was shaking too. It was actually pretty cool in retrospect and we did get an aftershock later that I do remember.

 

[MaryBush]

I never experience a earthquake.

Where I live we don't experience a earthquake.

 

[WoodlandWanderer]

I have never experienced an earthquake in my like, but then I live in the UK so... we aren't exactly well known for them.
According the to the british geological survey in the last 35 years only 25 earthquakes have been felt in the UK, and we can expect:
an earthquake of 3.7 ML or larger every 1 year
an earthquake of 4.7 ML or larger every 10 years
an earthquake of 5.6 ML or larger every 100 years.

pretty pityful, bey hey at least I'm quite safe!

Oh and we don't really get many other natural disasters here either. Only the occasional flood (usually cause by building in the wrong place) and the "Great storm of 1987" which was a real piece of work (that one is famously remembered because of a weather forecaster reassuring an old lady, on the tv, that there would be no storm).

 

[WildThing121675]

I experienced one in Cleveland, OH in 1986. I had been at a McDonald's with my mom and dad that day. I was home sick getting over an allergic reaction to some medication and I had to go to Cleveland with my mom to drop something off to my dad that he forgot, and I remember feeling the ground shaking.

This was also not long after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. Maybe a week or two after the incident.

The McDonald's I was at was very near Hopkins International Airport, and I thought at first it was a low-flying plane or something that caused the quake. I didn't know til I got home that it had been a REAL earthquake.

In 1998, I was taking a nap and all the sudden, I felt my bed shake and my room shake. I was home from work, and had gone out to eat with my mom and run some errands and I woke straight up. I turned my TV on, and all the local news stations were covering it. I remember that quake also cause I'd also had to go into work that night when I was off... eh, it happens.

Contrary to what you may think, Ohio does get earthquakes.

WildThing121675

 

[babibear]

I've felt a great many small and minor quakes, the strongest was a 5.4 which was mainly a north-south side-to-side quake. I have yet to be in a big enough quake to feel the up and down undulation.

I have a full cache of emergency supplies should a major one hit.

Recent Earthquakes for 122-38

 

[Point]

The only natural disasters in the desert are flash floods. And even those are weak, unless you're dumb and decide to play around in the dry riverbeds during thunderstorms. Desert rain isn't really rain, it's more like... a six-inch sheet of water falling from the sky over the city. And then it stops.

Yep.

I experienced an earthquake at a museum though. The ground was moving and everything! Then the lights turned red and I saw a volcanic eruption!