Remember how yesterday, after two quakes in the 4.x range hit Berkeley, I posted how the three things in life I'm most irrationally afraid of are - in this order - plane crashes, earthquakes, and tsunamis? Well, we're going to go ahead and move quakes up to the #1 position because right now I'm not so convinced it's an irrational fear.
At 10:35 p.m. we went to bed, exhausted from a long week at work for both of us. At shortly after midnight tonight I jolted awake, mid-quake. It was a "baby" quake by all accounts - only in the 2.x range. According to the latitude/longitude coordinates provided by the USGS earthquake map, it was roughly in the same area as yesterday's quakes.
Unable to sleep, I got dressed and was sitting in bed playing mahjong on my iPad when I heard my house start to rumble, and then I felt the bed shake beneath me (our house has made crazy noises in each quake just immediately before I feel the actual shaking). I threw off the covers and jumped in the bathroom doorway, just feet from the bed.
Alan barely stirred with a "huh? What?" before falling back asleep.
Me? Not so much. I don't think I'm going to get any sleep tonight. I'm kind of convinced there's a bigger one coming tonight and I'd like to be awake when it hits. They're scary enough when you're awake but the sensation you get when jolted out of your sleep is much worse.
Incidentally, that second quake - less than an hour later - was another "baby" quake at 2.5. According to the map it was 2.7 miles from my house, in The Uplands neighborhood, off Claremont Avenue, up around Highway 13. There are some gorgeous houses for sale up there. If I was a buyer right now you couldn't pay me to live there. If these tiny and mid-size quakes feel like this at my house I can't even imagine what they feel like on the fault line, at the epicenter.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Having grown up in Southern California myself, I am terrified of earthquakes. I hope your nerves aren't still shattered. That was a nasty crack. Is it going to be fixable?
ReplyDeleteEventually we'll get around to fixing the cracks. It seems to be hairline. Although maybe we'll just leave it since there are clearly more coming.
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