Just a week ago my husband reminded me that our old family-size tent had given up the ghost a number of years ago, the fabric aged and damaged and the thing unusable. It was bothering him that we weren’t prepared. He was thinking we should replace it in case we might, as we eventually will, have another big earthquake.
We looked at models, prices, talked budget. He knew I’d like an Ipad, which is a total toy (Don you old sweetheart don’t you even THINK about it!) A tent, on the other hand, we would hopefully never need to use (my camping days are over), but if we did need one, it would be so far from a frivolous thing. Got to keep those ravenous squirrels away from my millet-hull pillow.
Tent wins.
One thing that I read today said, “East Coast freaks, West Coast rolls its eyes”; 5.9 didn’t sound like all that much over here.
Different geological structures have different effects, though; ask anyone living in a liquifaction zone in California–we’re close to one but I think we’re okay, knock on rock.
Someone I grew up with, (Mom and Dad, that’s Ky), has a son living in Louisa, Virginia. His house is gone. Reading her note today, I was at first quite surprised–that’s real damage, not just a traffic jam.
But then I remembered that when we had our big earthquake, no news came out of the mountainous epicenter area for days because reporters couldn’t get in and phones there were down. The only mention of the Loma Prieta area in the news was from the USGS’s reports that gave the quake its name.
My husband’s aunt–who knew Ky as a small child–lived a half mile from that epicenter and her house was heavily damaged; her neighbor pulled into his driveway in time to see his three-story home collapse before his eyes, with, as it turned out, the two inside escaping harm because when the mom had called the teen moments earlier to come help cook dinner, the kid had come–joining her in the only room that turned out to be safe.
Do what your mom tells you.
I wonder what news reports will start trickling out of Louisa now, too.
But we had no way to know back then how the aunt’s family was, and her aged mother in Washington DC, dialing all night, called at 4 am our time to ask if we knew anything: she’d finally gotten through at least to us, but we too had heard nothing yet. (It was quite the experience, but they were okay.)
That did it. He’d been thinking of it for some time. My husband got his ham radio license right after that. He has ever since volunteered with the city, the county, and the Red Cross doing disaster services and emergency communications drills. He’s done a lot of good with it: because, once upon a time, there was an earthquake and people we loved were unaccounted for and maybe hurt.
And he never again wanted to be unable to know and unable to help.