Bay Area Earthquake! magnitude 4.2

[bikerz]

USGS details (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsus/Quakes/nc40199209.php#details)

Yikes - that was a doozy - the epicenter was about 2 miles from my house. One very load noise, and a good short hard rattle, followed by the sound you really don't want to hear - crashing and breaking glass from upstairs. Uh oh.

The kitchen reeks of vinegar (and it was nice vinegar too :( ) - several bottles came flying out of the cupboards and landed all over the the floor in pieces. A bunch of heavy things fell off shelves (including my camera bag with a couple of big lenses :eek:), but it doesn't look like anything is broken.

Whew. I never get used to them - especially the ones that wake you from a dead sleep. There have been several nearby on the last few years, but this is definitely the strongest I've felt in a while.

Rats. And now I'm wide awake a good 2 hours earlier than planned.

Everyone else in the area OK?

[Veronica]

Bummer about the vinegar. But there are worse smells and it doesn't linger too long.

Glad you're okay.

V.

[bikerz]

Did you feel it, V?

The vinegar is really such a silly thing to complain about, considering how bad the "big one" will be!

[Veronica]

No... we don't feel much out here. :D I'm up because my cat has not figured out that it's summer.

And now the tour coverage has started.

V.

[nancielle]

I can't imagine going through something like that. Several years ago a very weak quake rumbled through our area (first I thought it was the woman living downstairs from me doing aerobics until I looked at my aquarium and watched the water shifting :eek: ) Not something we generally experience here.

Happy to know that there were no serious casualties other than the vinegar and broken glass.

[maillotpois]

Didn't feel a thing.... We just got back from a trip to Bend (and stayed up past my bed time trying to get caught up on the Tour) so I was pretty dead to the world.

[bouncybouncy]

Hang on Girls!

Glad you are ok...and now you can rest knowing that the spot the vinegar spilled on is clean (it is the choice "green" cleaner...ok ok ok I am always finding a silver lining!)

I looked at the site you linked to...amazing how many little earthquakes have happened in the last week! most up north...

***I grew up out there, always interested in keeping up with "events"

my story about a few while living out there...I never actually felt any but seemed to follow them! I was on my way to SF the day after the Loma Prieta earthquake, canceled trip! was in LA area during the Northridge quake...managed to be in a car during each shock and never felt any...I did however walk into a grocery store immediately following a decent aftershock that knocked the pickles off their shelves...yeah, the vinegar was pungent!!!!

Stay Safe!!!

[LBTC]

Thanks for checking in - good to know the TE girls are okay. Our news is reporting no injuries or serious damage, but I just didn't quite believe them.

Stay safe and watch out for the aftershocks!

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~

[Trek420]

I must have slept through it :o

[jobob]

Ditto ! :o :o

[Brandi]

I am glad it wasn't any bigger! SFO always has more damage it seems then other places in cali. We had that 6.5 a couple years ago around christmas. Peoples roofs came off etc... We were on our bikes going down our street when it hit. Really weird feeling. My dh grabed me and said get away from the power lines. So we road down a dirt road away from them. We could hear a lady screaming (must have been from out of town) I mean it was a big one but not that big. Of coarse her perception might have been a bit different.
Everything in my house has earthquake goo under it and my cabnets all have rubber bands around the handles. Just in case.
Again I am glad it wasn't any bigger.

[DrBadger]

I must have slept through it :o

Me too.... :(

[snapdragen]

Me too.... :(

Me three! :p

[SadieKate]

BZ, I know what you mean. It's not just the suddeness for me. It's the fact that each shake is different and so fleeting. It always felt surreal -- except for the damage left over.

Here I go talking in the past tense for me when Vacaville to Winters has had some huge ones.

Brandi, the SFO area just gets more media coverage. I can remember hearing about the devastation in Santa Cruz/Aptos/Capitol during the Loma Prieta, I think that was it, but it was long after the fact and got very little coverage.

[bikerz]

Wow - you girls are heavy sleepers! :rolleyes:

Now that it's light out I'm seeing lots of other effects.

All the pictures on the walls are crooked, almost every framed photograph on a shelf fell over, all the drawers in my dresser rolled out 4-6 inches, 2 of my roommate's potted plants went over (dirt everywhere - time for Roomba to get to work! :cool: ).

The 10-lb hand-weights that I use to make my speaker stands more stable are now 10 inches away from their original placement. And get this - the toilet tank lid was shoved forward about an inch and water sloshed out of the toilet tank. :eek:

You can really get a sense of the line that the the motion took through the house. Since the epicenter was so close, there was no rolling, just one really hard shove!

But, yes - the tile floor where the vinegars spilled is nice and clean! I'm getting the notion that I ought to clean the rest of the floor with vinegar too!

[bikerz]

BZ, I know what you mean. It's not just the suddeness for me. It's the fact that each shake is different and so fleeting. It always felt surreal -- except for the damage left over.

I know - my first thought is never "Oh, it's an earthquake" - I always run through several totally outlandish scenarios ("moving truck landed on roof? Car drove into side of house?") before I realize what's going on, even after 25 years in California.

[aka_kim]

Didn't feel anything here in Concord.

Years ago while living in Pasadena I was about 2 miles from the epicenter of a similarly-sized quake. I was in the shower at the time, and was sure it was the Big One, with a lot of things falling over but nothing breaking. Almost nothing was reported on the TV though, and I got to work (which was about 15 miles from the quake) to find almost no one else had felt it. So my Big One was a non-event to the rest of the world. It's really surprising though, just how violent the shaking can be when you're close to the epicenter. Hopefully when the Big One does hit I will not be naked and blind, though ;)

Glad you made it through OK, Z.

[BikeMomma]

Wwwwhhhhaaaaaaaa! :mad: :( I didn't feel it either....but I'm a bit too far away to feel ones that "small."

BZ, your experience sounds cool. Frightening too, of course, but I'm like Badger and admire earthquakes, so it's a grand day when I feel one. How cool that you were so close to the epicenter! Hope there wasn't anything sentimental broken (unless you were especially attached to the vinegar :p ) or building damage.

~BikeMomma

[bikerz]

BikeMomma, I knew you'd be bummed to miss it! :p

[Trek420]

But, yes - the tile floor where the vinegars spilled is nice and clean! I'm getting the notion that I ought to clean the rest of the floor with vinegar too!

Maybe not with the gourmet "50 year old balsamic aged in Tuscan Oak Barrels" stuff though. :rolleyes: :p ;)

[Deanna]

My husbands an EQ nut, so these pages are bookmarked on our computers. I didn't feel it way up here, but apparently some folks did:

http://tinyurl.com/yun49n

My poor husband seems to miss them too, I've felt that last three or four small ones up here and he didn't -- once he was even in the shower down the hall and he thought I was making it up. Some folks are just more sensitive to the shaking I guess.

[spazzdog]

It was a "wake-up" shake for me... the bed felt like back in the college days after too much tequila.

No breakage, just a very freaked out cattle dog. Man! He hates it when the earth moves.

spazz

[Mr. Bloom]

Veronica, you should have stayed in Maine!

[kjay]

Darn! Felt nothing here in Foster City. :-(

[winddance]

I felt it, but I don't live very far from bikerz. It wasn't the usual rumbly-shake that I normally feel, but instead it was very sudden and harsh. I don't even think the cats heard it coming, because while orange kitty was sitting straight up, my Siamese was passed out asleep.

CNN said the quake lasted for 50 seconds, but I swear it's the shortest I've ever felt. I thought someone had rear-ended my bed.

The crack in the corner of my living room is now all the way up the wall, but I couldn't find anything else that was disturbed (except for my poor cats, who were twitchy the rest of the day.)