Just a sort of a little one tonight, a 5.6 near where the Calaveras and Hayward faults meet (uh, dudes, that’s probably not great news. The heavily populated Hayward was already set to go off, bigtime, and most of the hospitals in the East Bay are built ON or immediately next to the fault line. There’s a reason that land was cheap in the ’50’s!)
Doesn’t seem to be anything major damaged yet, according to preliminary reports. The resident Red Cross volunteer is monitoring events in the other room.
Several years ago, I was sitting knitting and my daughter was at the computer, when she suddenly exclaimed, “What’s *that!*
“Oh, about a 5,” I answered. It had felt like someone was kicking the seat and the back of the couch, like a toddler throwing a tantrum underneath it.
My husband in the other room immediately switched his computer to the USGS report; he needed to know. He came around the corner a moment later, and announced, simply, “5.4.”
You know you’ve lived in California too long when you can guess the Richtor scale level reasonably well.
A few phone lines are down right now in the South Bay and a few cell lines overloaded, is all we’ve heard so far. Actually, our big Loma Prieta quake in ’89 and the lack of telephone service afterwards and worrying about his aunt next to the epicenter is how he got his ham license and Red Cross certification in the first place. Because of that, he’s been there helping out at many a house fire since then and helped run the shelter during the big flood our city had nine years ago. He’d wanted to get involved and to do good in his community, and that 7.1 in ’89 prompted him to make it actually happen.