I've concluded that Californians are liars

During the Loma Prieta quake, I was the crew chief on a medivac flight from Visalia to Oakland. We had a patient who was going to Navy regional medical center for open heart surgery.

We were near Crow's Landing when ATC told us about the quake and said that the airspace was restricted to all traffic except EMS and law-enforcement participating in the emergency. We wound up diverting to a hospital in Fresno.

During the Nisqually quake of 2001, I was flying a Citabria 7ECA, near downtown Olympia when Seattle Center's radio frequency went dead silent for about 2 minutes. Soon after, I was handed off to Mcminville for following. That controller never said anything about the quake. But, he did seem unusually chatty, asking what kind of plane we were flying and what we were gonna be doing at Aurora state. When we landed, the line man told us about the quake.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
What you want to do is come visit Irving Texas.
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I'm over near Love and although people have said they've felt a few shocks, I pretty much missed feeling them. There's a sound like a big truck ran off the road and hit the building and then it's over. Do they get bigger than that?
 
The one thing Northridge really proved out though was the value of the "earthquake proofing" construction techniques. Lots of stuff was torn up, but the only stuff that collapsed was from prior. Considering the death toll of of 57 compared to what similar quakes produced in Japan, China, and Turkey, it really proved quite beneficial.
 
The last earthquake I could feel happened while I was sitting in a hotel room in Wichita. I only suspected it was an earthquake because I had felt a number of small ones like that before in California. I checked the USGS site and indeed it was. A 4.something in Oklahoma. My flying buddy told me he was in his room dozing and thought he was dreaming when his feet started moving on the bed.
 
Several times this summer I've felt a vibration in the house that was too low in frequency to be due to any of the construction equipment outside in the street. The first time it happened I suspected it was a minor quake, but there was no record of it on the seismology sites. It has to be machinery of some kind, I'm just not sure what kind.

There were several small quakes felt in Michigan during the time I lived there, but I never felt them. One even happened while I was up flying (to keep this aviation related :lol:)...
 
Henning said:
Lots of stuff was torn up, but the only stuff that collapsed was from prior.
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There was still much to learn. Several newer buildings were destroyed, among them the Los Angeles County branch courthouse in San Fernando (about ten years old at the time), the new parking structure at the Northridge Fashion Center mall (first photo below), and the three-year-old, four-story parking structure at Cal State Northridge, in one of my photos above, and the second aerial photo below.

Considering the death toll of of 57 compared to what similar quakes produced in Japan, China, and Turkey, it really proved quite beneficial.
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The main quake occurred at 4:31 AM on a holiday, Martin Luther King Day. Had it happened when the highways and commercial buildings were fully occupied, the death toll would have been much, much higher.


Earthquake-940117-01019.jpg


Flying-1990s-03129.jpg
 
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MAKG1 said:
I've been through two major quakes (1971 and 1989), and a whole bunch of smaller ones.

If it's under 5, you won't notice it unless it's centered under your left butt cheek.

They happen, but they aren't fun. Big quakes happen with no notice and destroy things you depend on. It sucks to try to get over the mountains when all the roads are closed by slides. And of course all the inbound groceries have to come that way, too.

Little quakes are ignored by everyone. You might have felt one and not known it.

You're not missing anything.
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jbarrass said:
I was at Presidio Monterey for the 1989 loma prieta earthquake. It felt pretty real. But for other reasons, I agree with your conclusions about Californians.
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Our house in San Jose was about 6 miles from the epicenter of the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. No structural damage, but there wasn't anything left standing in that house. Shelves emptied in the kitchen. Lamps down. I think one saucer survived in our china set. Our son was home alone (12 years old) and when the house quit moving he went out, opened the main breaker in the power panel, grabbed a wrench and turned off the gas and then hopped on his bicycle to go look for his sister. Not a bad performance on his part at all. My wife was taking classes at San Jose State. She ran for the car and headed home. I was at work in Cupertino (Tandem Computers, for those who remember that grand company) and was the first person to check into the club amateur repeater. Within 5 minutes we had a better idea of the situation around the campuses than our security people did. Of course, it didn't hurt that the President of Tandem, Jimmy Treybig, was a ham, too (W6JKV). I didn't get out of there for about an hour.

Now, what did that quake do for me? The aftershocks allowed me to calibrate what it takes to wake me up. Anything less than a 5.0 and I'll sleep right though it.

wilkersk said:
During the Loma Prieta quake, I was the crew chief on a medivac flight from Visalia to Oakland. We had a patient who was going to Navy regional medical center for open heart surgery.

We were near Crow's Landing when ATC told us about the quake and said that the airspace was restricted to all traffic except EMS and law-enforcement participating in the emergency. We wound up diverting to a hospital in Fresno.

During the Nisqually quake of 2001, I was flying a Citabria 7ECA, near downtown Olympia when Seattle Center's radio frequency went dead silent for about 2 minutes. Soon after, I was handed off to Mcminville for following. That controller never said anything about the quake. But, he did seem unusually chatty, asking what kind of plane we were flying and what we were gonna be doing at Aurora state. When we landed, the line man told us about the quake.
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I missed the Nisqually quake in 2001. I was on the east coast when it hit and heard about it from a seatmate on my flight from BWI to DEN (connecting to SEA). I violated rule #1 of financial behavior and swiped my credit card on the on-board phone. Called home. Got the answering machine. From that I figured the house was still standing and we had power. I hung up. When I got to DEN there were news crews at the gate for my connecting flight to SEA with videos running of some of the damage. By shear dumb luck I had a seat on United's first flight into SEA from DEN after they re-started and wasn't delayed a minute getting home.

One other thing that Loma Prieta (and all other other earthquakes in California) did for my wife is that she knows what one sounds like before it hits. When the Nisqually quake hit she had her class (6th graders) under their desks BEFORE the building started to move. In the middle of it one kid asks, "Is this a drill?" :D And the other teachers who heard about her having them under their desks so quickly wanted to know her secret. "I know what one sounds like!" was her answer.

Oh, and about the KOLM tower after the quake? My CFI was in the air near KOLM at the time and they asked him to do a low pass down the runway to see if there was any obvious damage. He didn't see any and let them know. And there was a great Klyde Morris cartoon shortly after about the SEA tower (which was shut down due to damage) giving constantly changing numbers for the elevation of the runway and finally just saying to contact the USGS. :D
 
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Pilawt said:
The 2001 Nisqually quake shattered the glass of the KSEA control tower. A piece of the shattered glass was made into a display and sent to the headquarters of the National Air Traffic Controller's Association in Washington, D.C.

Ten years later there was an earthquake in the DC area. Guess what was the only item destroyed in the NATCA office ...

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/komo/article/Glass-from-Sea-Tac-tower-breaks-in-D-C-quake-2138101.php
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Why do I suspect that it wasn't mounted correctly?
 
Pilawt said:
We moved out of Southern California a year later, though not directly because of the quake. So now we live 40 miles from an active volcano. :D
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Was that successful?

Do you think it will stay that way?

If the volcano doesn't erupt, does that make all Oregonians liar, too?
 
Florida Cracker said:
Was that successful? Do you think it will stay that way? If the volcano doesn't erupt, does that make all Oregonians liar, too?
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"They" tell us that even if St. Helens doesn't pop again, Mt. Hood might. That's if we're not already taken out by the expected massive Pacific Subduction Zone earthquake and associated tsunamis, locusts, frogs, etc., etc.

But pot is legal here now, so nobody cares.

:goofy:
 
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First quake I ever felt were 4.X quakes we had in NE Oklahoma last year. I have some large (6'x10') windows in my living room which were vibrating as if there was a dump truck lugging the engine in high gear outside. No damage to most places in the NE OK area from the low-4.X's, but if you get enough of them I'm sure there will be repercussions. Up until 2 years ago, people considering earthquake insurance in OK would have been called crazy.
 
Sac Arrow said:
Honestly, I've lived in California for almost 25 years and I can count the number of earthquakes I've felt on one hand.
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Trust me when I say thats not a good thing.

We now live right under a fault - literally it passes beneath my neighbors home - it can generate up to a 6. And it has. But the house was built in 1970 - and was here for a 4.8 and a 5.5 almost directly underneath.

There was a 4.4 a couple weeks ago - 13 miles away. It was boring.

I've felt some decent size ones - they get your attention but thats about it.

Of course the 8 on the San Andreas will be about 300x the energy of the 5.5. But instead of being next door its 90-100nm away and I'm on solid rock - we'll shake a little.
 
comanchepilot said:
Of course the 8 on the San Andreas will be about 300x the energy of the 5.5. But instead of being next door its 90-100nm away and I'm on solid rock - we'll shake a little.
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Maybe….

Loma Prieta was on the San Andreas, and the areas of greatest damage, along with about 2/3 of the fatalities, were some 80 miles away. Much of that was due to a freeway structure previously thought to be very safe in an earthquake. Turns out, it wasn't as resilient to shear as was thought.

The solid rock thing might work for you, but the dynamics are not that well understood. Quite a number of homes near the Loma Prieta epicenter were knocked off their foundations while on "solid rock."

The LA basin has some 50 major faults, not just San Andreas. There is one from Inglewood to Long Beach that gives a lot of people pause.
 
I've felt 2 earthquakes in the 6 months I've lived in Kodiak.
 
MAKG1 said:
Maybe….

Loma Prieta was on the San Andreas, and the areas of greatest damage, along with about 2/3 of the fatalities, were some 80 miles away. Much of that was due to a freeway structure previously thought to be very safe in an earthquake. Turns out, it wasn't as resilient to shear as was thought.

The solid rock thing might work for you, but the dynamics are not that well understood. Quite a number of homes near the Loma Prieta epicenter were knocked off their foundations while on "solid rock."

The LA basin has some 50 major faults, not just San Andreas. There is one from Inglewood to Long Beach that gives a lot of people pause.
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Let's list them! I'll start:

Their government
The traffic
The crime
Hollywood
Compton
SMO haters

:goofy:
 
I grew up in California, with the biggest quake for me being Northridge. It was pretty spooky. I was thrown out of bed, and everything on shelves or walls came down. The house was okay - just cracks in plaster - but we lost most of the walls surrounding the property. The aftershocks made sleeping pretty much impossible for awhile.

For me, even the smaller quakes get the adrenaline going. Mainly because you never know if it's going to get worse.
 
Henning said:
The one thing Northridge really proved out though was the value of the "earthquake proofing" construction techniques. Lots of stuff was torn up, but the only stuff that collapsed was from prior. Considering the death toll of of 57 compared to what similar quakes produced in Japan, China, and Turkey, it really proved quite beneficial.
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The highway in Newhall Pass had some of those improvements. It still fell down again.

Ghery said:
Why do I suspect that it wasn't mounted correctly?
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That's what she said. Tandem, eh? Good stuff back in the day.
 
SoonerAviator said:
First quake I ever felt were 4.X quakes we had in NE Oklahoma last year. I have some large (6'x10') windows in my living room which were vibrating as if there was a dump truck lugging the engine in high gear outside. No damage to most places in the NE OK area from the low-4.X's, but if you get enough of them I'm sure there will be repercussions. Up until 2 years ago, people considering earthquake insurance in OK would have been called crazy.
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We've had them down here my whole life. I don't think we've had any 4+ quakes in our area, but smaller ones are a pretty regular occurance. I can recall maybe a dozen that were big enough to rattle the windows and shelves. Growing up, we always heard the aluminum garage door rattle first as it traveled east to west through the house. Pretty cool actually.
 
My folks were on the Bay Bridge in '89 when the Loma Prieta quake happened, headed out of the City. It took them something like 14 hours to get out of the City because they had to reverse the direction of the traffic on the lower span when the piece from the upper deck collapsed. One of my co-worker's wife was crushed under the 880 upper deck that collapsed.
 
I was in a house yesterday built in 1905. That wood structure creaked with every step. I was also in that structure when there was 5.3 eq about 30 miles away - that old house shook like a Tijuana hooker - and like one - shrugged it off and went back to whatever it was doing.
 
MAKG1 said:
Maybe….

Loma Prieta was on the San Andreas, and the areas of greatest damage, along with about 2/3 of the fatalities, were some 80 miles away. Much of that was due to a freeway structure previously thought to be very safe in an earthquake. Turns out, it wasn't as resilient to shear as was thought.
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I'll give you two stories about the Cyprus Street collapse...

Person #1 - The architect who had designed the seismic update to the building I was sitting in (and wouldn't be here today without it) was one of the people killed in the freeway collapse.

Person #2 - The wife of a 2nd cousin of mine was one of the people pulled alive out of the collapse. She made it, the baby she was carrying did not.

Loma Prieta still gives my daughter problems. Couple that with having to bail out of a building in Seattle where she was working a coop job while a student at WSU during the Nisqually quake and she really doesn't like earthquakes. Can't say that I blame her.
 
Ghery said:
I'll give you two stories about the Cyprus Street collapse...

Person #1 - The architect who had designed the seismic update to the building I was sitting in (and wouldn't be here today without it) was one of the people killed in the freeway collapse.

Person #2 - The wife of a 2nd cousin of mine was one of the people pulled alive out of the collapse. She made it, the baby she was carrying did not.

Loma Prieta still gives my daughter problems. Couple that with having to bail out of a building in Seattle where she was working a coop job while a student at WSU during the Nisqually quake and she really doesn't like earthquakes. Can't say that I blame her.
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Problem with engineering is..... unless you have two IDENTICAL building directly side by side.. There is NO way you can prove his update actually worked and the un modified building would have collapsed... IMHO..
 
N801BH said:
Problem with engineering is..... unless you have two IDENTICAL building directly side by side.. There is NO way you can prove his update actually worked and the un modified building would have collapsed... IMHO..
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It's not easy, but an FEM model will get you pretty close. With a lot of work.

A shake table and model can also help, though there are some nasty issues with scaling.

There is one big advantage to a post-analysis over a prediction. You know the shake profile.

It's not impossible, just difficult and expensive. But, I doubt anyone will want to pay for such a study.
 
MAKG1 said:
It's not easy, but an FEM model will get you pretty close. With a lot of work.

A shake table and model can also help, though there are some nasty issues with scaling.

There is one big advantage to a post-analysis over a prediction. You know the shake profile.

It's not impossible, just difficult and expensive. But, I doubt anyone will want to pay for such a study.
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I agree 100% buddy.....

I am a commercial contractor and my personal opinion is.....

In the last 10 years or so the codes are drifting to massive framing with Simpson fasteners and other attaching methods to make a rigid, stiff and non flexible structure.... There are 100+ year old log buildings here in Jackson that are laying right on the ground with nothing more then a few field stones lined up for their foundation.... NO anchor bolts, NO hold down straps. NOTHING.... They have survived numerous earthquakes and are still standing and able to occupy humans...

Case in point... Boeing and other aircraft will have wing flex in the 5-8 foot range to absorb the bumps.... Can you imagine a stiff wing with NO flex at all.:yikes::eek::hairraise:

I am convinced the engineers and architects are designing building envelopes that are WAY too stiff and when a big ground event comes, those will shake themselves to death, while the old, flexible buildings will survive.. It will take a 7.5 or greater to prove my point.. And by then all the engineers, architects and building inspectors will be retired and living the high life in Bali....:rolleyes::rolleyes:
 
I've lived in hurricane alley, tornado alley, and near a major fault. I'll take severe weather and flying trailers over moving earth any day of the week. I'm 180 out in California - a small quake will send me to the ceiling from a dead sleep but a thunderstorm I sleep through makes the local news.

Nauga,
who says, "dirt's up!" (with credit to Ron W.)
 
nauga said:
I'll take severe weather and flying trailers over moving earth any day of the week.
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At the time of the Northridge quake our next-door neighbor was a retired Canadian Air Force CF-104 pilot. For the first two weeks after the quake we'd see him standing on the sidewalk in front of his house with a highball in his hand. He didn't want to go back in the house. "I'd rather be shot at in combat," he said.
 
N801BH said:
I am convinced the engineers and architects are designing building envelopes that are WAY too stiff and when a big ground event comes, those will shake themselves to death, while the old, flexible buildings will survive.
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I thought you needed the stiff structures in Wyoming to hold up to the wind...

:D
 
We are not liars. I live in CA and felt an earthquake just the other day when flying at 5000agl in the airplane.
 
RalphInCA said:
We are not liars. I live in CA and felt an earthquake just the other day when flying at 5000agl in the airplane.
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You really might want to have a talk with the A&P over that one.
 
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