May 14, 2002

Earthquake

We had an earthquake last night. 5.2 on the Richter scale and the epicenter was about a hundred miles south of San Francisco.

They say animals act weird right before an earthquake. I forget or haven't actually ever heard the definitive reason why this is, actually, but I know I have anecdotal proof of this in my own past. Including last night. About an hour before the earthquake, Alecto (our cat) was acting weird. For some reason, she was just sitting there with her tail poofed-out and bushy like cats do when they're pissed off. But she didn't seem to be particularly focused on anything while she just sat there in the room, her tail very very bushy.

"What's her problem?" Laszlo and I asked each other and we tried to figure out what was freaking her out. But she calmed down and her tail returned to normal proportions.

We shrugged and figured we had just missed seeing whatever it was that set her off.

Then, an hour later, the house shook.

Occasionally, people who have never been in an earthquake ask me what they're like. Well, they're interesting. They usually don't last very long. Generally, by the time you realize the shaking is an earthquake and you wonder if you should do something (the conventional advice is to stand in a doorway or get under something sturdy), the shaking stops. I've never personally experienced much damage in an earthquake -- luckily -- and I've been here during some of the nastier earthquakes. Such as the infamous 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco, which caused quite a bit of damage in the city and around. That was a scary earthquake and the shaking lasted longer than most I've experienced. I dived under my desk and had more than a few seconds to contemplate the possibility the walls might crumble. I live in the bottom floor apartment of a three-story building. I don't particularly like wondering if the building will collapse. I doubt standing in a doorway or diving under my desk would particularly help me much in such a situation.

One of the other scariest earthquakes I remember wasn't actually a big earthquake. It happened sometime in the mid-80s, but the reason I found it scary is it happened when I was work, and at the time I worked in an office in a tall downtown building on an upper floor. I don't remember, offhand, which floor it was -- 30-something? I think. The taller downtown buildings in San Francisco are built to withstand earthquakes -- which they do by having "give" in their structure. This means that after an earthquake, the building just continues to sway for quite a few minutes afterward. Even if one realizes, logically, that the swaying is supposed to happen and is part of what is supposed to make a tall building able to withstand a quake, well, I will tell you, it is still extremely unnerving to be in a swaying tall building. Because they sway A LOT.

The much larger 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake knocked the power out, and it stayed out in my neighborhood for 3 or 4 days. Still, considering that we personally hadn't experienced much direct damage and there were plenty of people who had, that wasn't so much to put up with.

After that one, they closed the freeway exit near my apartment and tore down part of the offramp as it had been deemed unstable after that earthquake. So, there's a broken freeway to nowhere at the end of my block that the pigeons have taken over.

I wonder if the pigeons act weird before earthquakes, too. And if one would notice a pigeon acting weirder than usual.

My cat was fine right after the earthquake last night, although she did look a bit annoyed with us. I'm sure she thinks we had something to do with it.