2001-09-18 - 5:25 p.m.
Had my first earthquake early this morning -- no harm done. It was actually an odd series of events. At about 4:10 AM I woke up to my cell-phone buzzing, but it turned out to be junk mail so I went back to sleep. About 15 minutes later, I woke up to a slight rumbling which then turned into a pretty strong shake. I could hear my dishes rattling in the kitchen. I grabbed my flashlight and my cell phone and dashed into the living room to crawl under the table, but by that time it was over. In retrospect, I'm not sure I would FIT under the table, because it is so low to the ground. Anyway, as was running into the living room, my phone rang. I assumed that it was one of my neighbors, but it turned out to be a friend from the States. My heart was racing as I told her, "We just had an earthquake!" What odd timing -- the phone rang JUST as the quake stopped. The quake was short, I was awake for maybe 30 seconds of it, but it was pretty strong, or medium-strong. One of the teachers at work guessed it was between a 4 and a 5. I'm kind of glad my first one was so strong -- now I know what it feels like and what to do. A teacher told me I should have opened my front door, so I know to do that now. I'm hoping that the fact that we just had a medium earthquake means that the fault line let some tension out (or whatever) so that it's less likely we'll get a REALLY big one soon. Any geologist or Californian friends want to confirm or deny this hypothesis?
