My very first earthquake: a few months after my wife and I had quit our East Coast jobs, packed up, and driven to a new apt in San Diego. 6am or so, our apt is on 3rd floor of a tall wooden apt bldg. 6.0 quake hits, lierally THROWS ME OUT OF BED onto the floor, I scramble up having no idea wtf is going in, my wife’s freaking out too, I run into the long narrow hallway from bedrm to living rm and I swear the walls in hallway formed a parallelogram. Whole building swaying! Insane.
By 2001, by which time we were in a house on a hill looking out over the Pacific, whenever a quake hit, we would pause from sipping our wines, feel the quake shake and rattle the house, then I’d say, in a jaded, oh-so-cool been-there-done-that Californian way, “Seems like a 4.5, epicentered 175 miles NNE, 20 miles from Lake Arrowhead, and I’m gonna say, hmm, 4.5 miles underground” and my wife would announce her guess then we’d check the TV to see who was more right. 🤣
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