There was a 7.0 earthquake tonight at 7:50 off the California coast, way up north near the Oregon border. A tsunami warning was issued, but later rescinded. I felt a mild flutter of panic, as I am less than two miles from the sea, but even a giant wave would lose a hell of a lot of steam on the uphill climb toward my house. Still, I worried for the people who do live on the coast. But then the warning was called off, which seems weird since it’s not like the earthquake didn’t happen.
Furthermore in weirdness news, as I was leaving French class tonight, my teacher was telling me how he hadn’t felt any earthquakes yet and has lived here five years. I said I had felt about four mild ones (less than 5.0) and worried that it had made me apathetic about them. Ninety minutes later — very large earthquake. Luckily under the ocean floor.
An earthquake can feel like the floor is rolling, or like someone dropping something very heavy on the floor repeatedly. Or it can just feel like the house is being punched from side to side. It’s very strange and disconcerting, but luckily for me, when it has happened to me, it has been relatively gentle and brief. May it ever be so.
I admit I am sick, but I get the smae kind of thrill from them as I do from roller coasters. While they’re happening, I mean. It’s only afterward that the fear sets in.
You should have heard the panic in peoples’ voices after the absurdly minor earthquake we had here a couple years back (a 4.something). It was the END of the WORLD!! Except that almost no one had felt it.
Jesse’s house is fairly near some train tracks. When a REALLY heavy train goes by, the whole house shakes, slightly. The first time I experienced that, in the middle of the night, I thought to myself; “oh, little ‘quake…wait…WISCONSIN?”