Earthquakes!

[Kipiru]

A 4 point earthquake just rocked my apartment. The epicenter was no more than 500 meters away and the shaking was quite noticeable! Now I know 4 points is not exactly a disaster, but it was pretty nasty! If any of you have experienced something similar or have a comment on earthquakes in general, you are welcome to share!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

4.0 is nothing to write home about...
... but 500m away is, definitely, and more than makes up for the lack of Richter.


Wow. I'm impressed. May I ask where you are?

[superluser]

I used to live in Erie, PA, which doesn't get big earthquakes, but does regularly get small ones, like 3.0 and maybe even 4.0, every few years.  You'd read about it in the papers the next morning and say, ``Wow!  I slept through an earthquake.''

What Kipru, however, experienced was certainly something different.  Is everyone and everything OK?

[Zina]

There was a 7.0 earthquake here about two months ago that caused a 10 cm tsunami. TEN CENTIMETERS, I TELL YOU.

They issued a warning and everything.

It was mighty.


The earthquake itself was pretty cool. First earthquake I've felt(previous ones I've just slept through), and the entire building swayed back and forth. It lasted for over a minute. Nothing was damaged, though.

[Kipiru]

To answer llearch- I'm from Bulgaria and the earthquake happened in our capitol- Sofia, not a likely place for such an occurrence! Thankfully 4.0 is pretty weak and apart from a little swaying and a bit of a start there were no incidents!

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

It's not so much that the quake itself is weak, it's that places that don't have them a lot tend to have different building standards, which means the effect is usually greater.

Just to take one point, there are very few brick houses in New Zealand - usually timber frame. Now, a timber frame house will flex (alarmingly, in the bigger quakes) but remain more or less in one piece. A brick house will shatter and crumble.


The UK has a lot of brick houses. I'm less than happy about living in one, myself. Although I'd be interested to build a brick house that _could_ survive a quake, I doubt I'll ever get the chance, what with money being how it is etc...

[Kipiru]

Well the same goes for Bulgaria llearch, we have very little in mind about earthquakes when building living areas. Everything is rugged construction of bricks and concrete, meant to keep away extreme cold and heat(as we get both, being a complete four season country), but not prepared for earthquakes!

[Gareeku]

Llearch, the UK is nowhere near a plate boundary. Yes we sometimes get earthquakes, but we get them once in a blue moon. Therefore, we have no need to build earthquake-resistant structures unlike other places, as we hardly ever get them, and when we do get them, they're very small 99% of the time.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I'm aware of it, Gareeku.

You don't get houses like these in quake areas, because they tend to fall down. On the other hand, you don't tend to get timber frame houses in areas like the UK, because it's too damn cold to build like that, and there's too much buildings and not enough wood.

Bricks are basically dirt smooshed together. Not hard to make those, and you can make a lot of them faster than you can grow a stack of trees around here.

Plus there's not much space to grow trees in, because it's mostly covered in houses... but that's another discussion. ;-]


(But I do thank you for making the point, because it shows that my post was less than clear.)

[Lysander]

I live probably less than a mile away from the Wasatch Fault in the US and I've never been in an earthquake that woke me up (all of ours seem to happen at night for some reason which would suck if there was a serious one). And for some reason there's brick houses everywhere here which doesn't really make sense with regards to earthquakes.

It's good to know there wasn't any real problems in your area.   

[Aisha deCabre]

Ah, earthquakes.

I used to live in Las Vegas, NV...of course California is renowned for Earthquakes because of the San Andreas fault, but if I recall correctly there are a few other small fault lines around.  Vegas doesn't get that many natural disasters (aside from flooding, blame that on poor drainage systems though), but I've lived through a couple of small quakes.  Very small, but noticeable, as it's easy to see when everything shakes a little bit.

I was woken up by one once...dreamed that everything in the room was shaking, and when I opened my eyes, everything actually -was- shaking.  One of the bigger hotels had it bad enough that water was splashed out of toilets, but that's about it.

Now I live in the armpit of the US, where nothing happens save for a bit of snow, rain and hail. x3

[VSMIT]

California had a state-wide earthquake drill for a demonstration of what would happen if a 7.8 ripped out of the San Andreas.  Simulations of the quake state that if it started at the end, it would rip open the faultline up to a point (can't remember exactly where) and open up other, smaller faults stemming from San Andreas.  Could cause a huge amount of devastation, kill hundreds and injure tens of thousands if it hit.  I like it here, but this is kind of making me nervous.

[Robbychu]

A shining example of why the East Coast is awesomer then the West Coast. We only have to worry about (very rare) landslide-induced tsunami.

Well, that's not as bad as this mega-quake my Oceanography teacher (she also teaches the only Physical geology class) told my class about. Apparently it'll be a big 'un when it hits; the epicenter would be over two states away, and the chart says that Virginny would still feel it.

Sorry, can't remember where it's supposed to be; I was told almost a year ago. I think it was south and west of Virginia, but that's all I can remember.