So we had an earthquake about an hour ago. I was horizontal on the sofa, as was my dog Danny. I always hear reports about animals getting up and running around before the earthquake hits, but not my Danny. He has not one shred of intuitiveness or whatever it is all other dogs seem to have that allows them to save their owners’ lives!! Useless bloody dog. 🙂
This earthquake measured 7.2 on the Richter scale, and was centered in Mexicali, which must be 200 miles away. It’s the first time in all the 35 years I’ve lived here where an earthquake we could feel in LA was felt in San Diego, too. I know this as I was talking to my friend Joan in San Diego just a minute after. “Did you feel that?”, “did you feel that?”, is the start of conversations as everyone starts calling each other. “That was a rolling one”, “that was a jolt”, like watching the Olympics, we are all “experts” on earthquakes. I guess a big tell tale sign that all is okay is that the phones are working. When we had “the big one” in 1994 no phones worked. And believe it or not, most of us didn’t have cell phones then, either. I lived in a complex of 10 units then and only one of us owned a cell phone — the Hollywood director, natch! In those “old” days part of our earthquake preparedness was to call someone out of state to let them know we’re okay. Each family had one person designated so we all knew who to call to find out about others. I wonder if this is starting to sound to our kids like “back in my day I walked 25 miles to school, in the snow, shoeless”?
But back to this earthquake, if it was just a 7.2 over 200 miles away, imagine what it felt like in Haiti or Chile!!!! I have no idea. I think our “big one” was a 6.4, if I remember correctly, and it was huge. Freeways came down, walls parted letting the sunlight in, everything fell out of fridges, bookshelves, etc. Haiti was a 7.0. We’re watching the news now waiting to hear what’s happened to poor Mexicali, no news yet. Hopefully everyone was outside looking for Easter eggs and no one was hurt.
The thing about earthquakes, to me anyway, is they’re quite exciting. The initial shock, everyone running outside, the camaraderie, the “rush”. But it’s the aftershocks that become tedious. You never know if this is another big one, you have to run outside anyway, and after a few days of these, being interrupted how many times a day when you’re trying to work and the “rush” has worn off, is a royal pain. So I just looked up Haiti earthquake news to see that they’re still suffering from aftershocks, three today, two over 3.0 and one a 4.2! That’s huge. I can’t begin to imagine just how bad it is there.