The Great Earthquate Shake Out

Our campus is participating in a Southern-California earthquake response simulation. In about 55 minutes, I'll be calling in damage reports to our response center. People on subways will find that the vehicles have slowed to a crawl.

This is supposed to represent a 7.8 earthquake. The 1994 Northridge quake was 6.8, so this would be 1000 times worse. 1994 was bad enough, thank you. But I'd rather have an earthquake than a tornado or hurricane any day. The worst is over pretty quickly.

Like most people, I'm sure my house is no longer ready for another big quake. The mess that broken alcohol bottles and jelly beans can make on your floor is something I will never forget. Then there was the dancing refrigerator which moved about 3 feet into the center of the kitchen. The fallen book shelves were not much fun to put back (and they had been nailed into the wall!) It was 10 days before we stopped sleeping in the living room because being trapped in the bedrooms during aftershocks was a scary thought.

And, of course, we still laugh about my mother calling before the first shaking had stopped. She was watching the morning news when the special report came through during Eastern Standard Time. I had better things to do than work my way through broken glass in the dark to the only phone working in the house--which I told her before I hung up. The phone didn't work again until a day later. Electricity was out for at least a day. It took a week to get the gas back on. But people were outside barbequing while back east, the snow and ice was so bad there was no school for a week. A friend said "I'd rather have your disaster." I agreed.

It was the first time I remember relying on on-line communication to find out how people were doing. List serves kept reporting when someone had been heard from. Friends who were able to reach us by phone (when they worked again) would then post to let others know we were all right.

Earthquake Update

The phones are working again and there's no discernible damage at the house, so we've survived the latest rocking. It does make me wish our carpenter had finally come back and put doors on the cabinets where my glasses reside and I'm hoping Len will run out for more Quake-hold.

It is the only topic of conversation here at the moment, and I think the television is having a field day covering nothing. So here's a possible story:

Today is the first day of the July 2008 California Bar Examination. Two of the locations, the Ontario Convention Center and the Anaheim Convention Center are a lot closer to the epicenter than I am. What happened? Were the students disrupted from the exam? Will they be allowed to make up time or will they be just as screwed as the five people who ran to help the guy having a seizure when I took the exam in Feburary 1993. That turned out to be embarrassing for the State Bar President when Jay Leno had a field day. I hope, if students had to abandon their exams, that the time will be made up.

In any case, on Saturday I'm having dinner with two recent graduates who are taking the exam this go round, probably in Ontario. I can't wait to hear their experience.

Earthquake

We just had quite a rattler. It's the first time I've been in an earthquake this big while I've been at work. My phone isn't working and neither is the cell, so I can't check and see what's going on at home until I leave for lunch. That's why the 1994 quake, which was pretty big, didn't scare me totally--all of us were home together and I didn't have to worry about where Len or Michael was and if they were safe.

The USGS says that it was centered near Chino Hills and it was a 5.8. That's on the other side of L.A. from us. Here's a map. The aftershocks have already been as big as 3.8 and there have been a number of them since this happened.