Please share your experiences of earthquakes, has your area ever been hit by a strong one?

Red Deer had a 4.0 magnitude earthquake 2 years ago, most likely from fracking. I didn’t notice.

Were you sleeping at the time?

The closest I got to experiencing an earthquake was feeling a little rumble at night, where I was not sure if It was my body having light tremors, or of it indeed came from the outside.

@ZEPHYRA I don’t know. I am always sleeping or on Fluther.

I was thirteen when the 6.6 magnitude earthquake centered in San Fernando hit Los Angeles County. It was about six in the morning when my bed began to slam against the wall. To be fair I slept on a roll-away bed cot. My mom ran into my room and got my sister and I out of bed and into the front doorway. It wasn’t a rolling sort of quake. It was a real hard slammer. When I got to school the office file cabinets had been thrown on the floor and things were a mess. Living in CA I’ve experienced several quakes, but I have to say this was the worst for me.

Adding to my above comment, the aftershocks went on for several days, as usual after a large quake.

Yes, this one in 1989, which happened just after 5:00 p.m..

My neighborhood got rocked and rolled, but we weren’t close to the epicenter. I was sitting on the front steps with two kids at the time, and we grabbed onto the posts. We saw the big window of the house across the street ripple like water while all the power lines shook.

I turned on the TV right away and immediately saw the collapsed 880 freeway. It was a pretty startling sight.

We had a few things fall off shelves and break, and a couple of pictures bounced off the walls. Some neighbors had their chimneys crack. One two-story house on our street rocked on its timbers and ended with a marked tilt. Those folks packed their car the next morning and drove away. Later the house was torn down and replaced.

As for aftershocks, I don’t remember. The subjective shock probably trumped those.

The first time I felt an earthquake in California, I was so stunned by the sensation that I basically froze in place. I did learn pretty quickly, though, to jump for a doorway or run outside like a native, even though nothing of the sort happened where I came from. But no, I never slept outside after an earthquake.

In my years here in the Bay Area, I’ve felt many earthquakes. Most were small and passed quickly. I don’t think I was awakened by one more than a couple of times; the mattress pretty much absorbed the shocks.

Only once and that was at home in New Jersey. About 11 years ago, I was at home in the middle of the day when there was just a little rocking motion that wasn’t coming from me. (It kind of made me think later of when you first feel the quickening of a baby in your uterus and know it’s not you.) I ran outside to see if anyone else had felt it and nobody was outside so I cam inside and went on the internet. It was an earthquake whose epicenter was in somewhere like Arlington, Virginia. I called my husband who was out on a sailboat and they hadn’t felt anything. I wasn’t scared so much as surprised. There were no aftershocks that I felt and no damage to the house.

Couple of times as a kid, lived in California in the 1940’ and 1950’s. I remember the boards in the living room had cracked and split after a night time quake. Also one while in grammar school, overhead lights swaying, not large. Also the the Virginia earthquake in 2011, I live 200 miles away. We still got shaking and rumbling.

I’m fairly sensitive to earthquakes. When I lived in LA I felt them very frequently. I remember one especially, because I was on a second story porch and could look over the rooftops. It looked just like watching the ocean waves roll up and down.

I was sitting in a lawn chair in Ventura when the 1989 one hit San Francisco and I felt it 350 miles away.

Here in Northern California, I often feel earthquakes from as far away as Carson NV and Chester CA.

I lived on the Big Island of Hawaii for 15 years. The island is made up of 5 volcanoes, of which 3 are still active. We got lots of little earthquakes all the time from the lava moving around. There were a few big ones like 5 or so. After I moved to Oahu, they had a 7 over there that really shook things up.

@Jeruba I remember that one. I lived in Modesto at the time. I was in my car heading home from work and pulled over to the curb, not sure if it was my car or a quake. When I found out where it was centered I knew it was a big one if I could feel it an hour and a half from the epicenter.

In 89 I had climbed into the back of my cargo van to retrieve a tool box which was inconveniently located beyond my reach. The van began rocking with me bouncing around. I thought the crew at the warehouse where I was parked decided to have fun by rocking my van around with me in it, and I climbed out puzzling over how they managed it. I emerged to see a huge pipe suspended from a crane at the construction site next door swinging back and forth as it also rotated at the end of the line on the crane suspending it a good 20 feet in the air. The operator had flung the door agape and was already running to join the crowd of hard hats scampering from a hole toward the gate in the fence. I then understood and realized the implications. I threw the tools in the van and peeled out of the lot thinking I would be lucky to sleep at home that night. Sure enough, the traffic lights were out, but people were politely taking turns as I sat waiting my turn gazing at the huge pall of smoke rising from the Bay Bridge and Oakland. My pager went off. It was the wife. ” u ok? I’m ok”. I remember feeling ashamed of myself, but got on that on ramp and drove South like a bat out of hell. The traffic was surprisingly managable, but already the sirens were blaring above the din of freeway noise. Exiting as you might expect, was more tedious than getting on the freeway. But the daze was still serving me well as I made it home from the warehouse in under 20 minutes. I grabbed the phone to call the wife’s office. While it rang endlessly, I retrieved the again beeping pager, and pushed the “call me” button. Then entered I’m ok.

@lastexit

“I was thirteen when the 6.6 magnitude earthquake centered in San Fernando hit Los Angeles County.”

Are you referring to the Northridge earthquake of January, 1994?

We have them all the time now(since fracking started in Oklahoma.) About 6 years ago I was at my computer a particularly strong one hit, about a 5. I jumped for my bedroom where the baby was sleeping in her Pack n Play. But it quit before I snatched her up.

I have been through a few, having lived most of my life in the SF Bay Area. Loma Prieta on 10/17/89 was by far the strongest I ever went through. it felt like it lasted a full minute, shock after shock, jolts and not rollers. Then the power went out and everything got quiet.

The aftershocks were expected, so not a surprise. But people didn’t sleep outside because most of the houses and apartment buildings weren’t damaged, even down in Santa Cruz.

@Brian1946 Sorry. I meant to state the year and forgot. That was 1971. I lived in Modesto during the big Northridge quake.

I have felt tremors in Lansing, Michigan (my first thought was my roommate’s pet rat was loose iin the sofa where I was sitting), Chicago and Los Angeles.

Oddly, even though I lived in LA for 5 years and spent half my time there for 4 more, the strongest quake I felt was in Chicago. It felt like someone gave the floor a couple of tugs. It was not strong enough to break anything.

Twice I felt tremors when I lived outside of Memphis. The slightest things. One time I was standing and felt the earth move, almost felt like the earth slipped a little beneath my feet. Another time I was lying on the sofa watching TV and felt it. Both times I was thinking was that just an earthquake? Indeed the news reported not much later that there had been one. I think they were 4’s. I lived far from the fault line. That fault, the New Madrid fault, has mini tremors constantly.

My husband grew up in Mexico City and went through a couple bad quakes. He has stories of driving to school as a teenage and through the window of his car started to see the trees along the road go up and down. Getting to school and things were bad. Nothing ever terribly tragic with his family or friends though. The worst of it was never right where they lived.

Oh, I don’t know what was the magnitude of the earth quake but I was living out in town in a two story home in Japan when I felt a strong quake. It was day time. The metal shutters were closed and the whole house shimmied. It was weird. I didn’t I was downstairs and did not feel the floor move but the shutters that were closed on one end shook vibrated and the floor above me vibrated in a wave. No lie, my first thought poltergeist. And the wave continued down vibrating the walls and windows and ceiling to the other side of the house. I called another American living nearby and thought she would think I was insane, but she told me it happened at her house too and that the houses are designed to release the energy that way so they don’t fall apart. I was so relieved. I was praying it was a quake. I was ready to move out otherwise. But its a terrifying thing to see. I never saw a ceiling do a wave or walls. But the rattling of the mettle window shutters really freaked me out.
After that there were some minor ones but I hardly felt those and only a slight rattling.
Oh, my other thought at the time was I was going insane and seeing things.

In early 1995, I was on a business trip in Japan with several other Americans to present our product line to a Japanese auto manufacturer. We stayed in Yokohama since that was conveniently located between Tokyo to the east and Fujisawa and Nagoya to the west.
I got up at 5:30, and was taking a shower when the building began to shake. It was a feeling like I had lost my balance. I quickly got out of the shower and got dressed so I could meet my coworkers and get breakfast and get on the road for our 8:00 meeting with the customer. While driving we talked about the shaking and reviewed our presentations, I gave them tips on what to expect and how to behave.
When got to the customer tech center a little early and were setting up in the engineering conference room. I walked out to see a friend of mine to let him know I was there a little early. The entire department was silent and watching TVs showing the destruction and fires in Kobe that had just been hit by the Great Hanshin Earthquake. Everyone at the office knew at least one person living in Kobe. Some had to leave to help family or friends. No one was interested in spending the day with us. We agreed to delay the meeting one day.
My group waiting in the conference room didn’t have a clue. We went back to the hotel and used the day to watch the news, walk through Chinatown, and practice our presentations.

I experienced an earthquake once while on vacation in Puerto Rico. It was odd. The only thing I noticed is that the mattress of my bed slowly stretched and contracted.

We had one here in Idaho last year. (6.5 on April 31, 2020) I was in my kitchen when the table started hammering the floor as if there was a jack hammer under the house, then, seconds later, the house started swaying.
One of my customers reported that people north of the river reported the same thing I did, while people south of the river only reported the swaying.

I was at Game 3 of the World Series when the ‘89 San Francisco Earthquake hit. I had just gotten beers for me and my BIL and all I could think of was ‘I’ve got to stop drinking’. I made it back to our seats and some guy had a TV and they were covering the Bay Bridge collapse. When I saw that I knew the game wouldn’t happen so we left and headed home. It took about six hours to go the 50 miles to San Jose. No damage to the house but a lot of things got knocked off the shelves. My wife told me that the water in the swimming pool lifted out like a tidal wave and crashed against the sliding glass doors. The Giants lost in four which was the most traumatic part.

My sister was 5 miles from the epicenter, driving in her bug. She said the car got thrown around. She thought all 4 tires had blown.

I was born in ‘91 so I didn’t experience Loma Prieta, the last major one here in the Bay.
Interesting to read about everyone’s experiences of it, though. My mom was living in San Jose at the time and she experienced some PTSD as a result (thoughts of the house collapsing while walking down the hallway, not wanting to be alone in the house). It wasn’t until my older sister was born the next year that my mom was really able to move past it. I’ve only experienced minor ones in my lifetime; the largest I remember was in Napa in 2014. Felt only as a mild trembling where I was but enough to unnerve me. I also remember feeling one in 2007 while on the phone with a friend; we both stopped talking for a moment while it happened. Growing up in California you’re warned of the “big one” your whole life.

I live in Los Angeles. I’ve been experiencing earthquakes my whole life. Most are small to medium size but I lived through the Northridge earthquake in 1994. I lived in Hollywood at the time and we had a rooftop pool on our apartment building. After we were sure we weren’t going to drown as the water poured through our ceiling, we went up to the roof and the whole city was black. It was eerie but also beautiful. I have never seen so many stars in the city. The earthquake turned out to be destructive to many parts of the L.A. area but my memory of it was finding my cat hiding in the shower and the beauty of the night sky.

Seeing the news footage of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 made me fear the bridges in the bay area, and to this day I still hate crossing them.

The bridge collapse is one of the most horrifying things that has ever happened.

In 1989, I was a grad student at UCLA. When Loma Prieta hit, my lab shook significantly even though it was 350 miles away. I thought about ducking under my desk if it got any stronger, in case the windows would shatter. It felt like a magnitude 5 from nearby, but it was actually 6.9 over there.

I was in Torrance during the 1994 Northridge quake, magnitude 6.7. That was about 35 miles away. I was sleeping when it started. I had a dream that my brother-in-law’s nanny was shouting “El Diablo! El Diablo!” right before I woke up. My bed was whipping back and forth almost like the bed in The Exorcist.

Sure. Like @RocketGuy I live in California, but I was significantly closer to the epicenter of Loma Prieta. I lived in San Francisco and I was in Oakland at the time. I was trapped in Oakland for a couple of days because the bridges were out. I have lots of other stories about that particular day. I was working in a hospital and a bunch of us were huddled in a doorway during the major bit of it. After the quake we all ran around to the patient rooms to make sure everybody was okay.

But living in California now I barely even feel them. I don’t know if you ever saw the movie LA Story where they are all sitting around breakfast and there is an earthquake and they all ignore it? Well, that’s kind of typical, actually.

I grew up in California and felt lots of them including a big one in ‘72 that knocked out our power for a couple hours and put some big cracks in the house. If you grow up with them, it’s an instinct to instantly start identifying parts of the building that would be safest and/or most dangerous and move accordingly, quickly, if the earthquake seems powerful.

Now in NYC I was surprised one afternoon in 2011 while on the phone with someone. I was gazing out the window and 50+storey buildings in the neighborhood seemed to be swaying relative to my window frame – they were. There was a 5.8 earthquake centered in Virginia.
It caused minor damage to buildings in Brooklyn and everywhere in between

Another quake I experienced was in August 1978 in Santa Barbara. Although the magnitude was not that huge, it was only a half mile off shore from where I was working at a hotel.

I was in an office with large floor to ceiling windows; we thought they might explode. We all got next to the support columns. The hotel had a “pond” outside with a flock of ducks. The ducks went crazy as the water in the pond and in the swimming pool was sloshing back and forth.

The power was out all over. I as sent to a grocery store to buy flashlights, but nothing in the store was on the shelves, it was all on the floor in a huge mess.

Around here we kind of ignore tornado sirens.

Sometime I get up and FB is talking about an earthquake but I never felt it. I the shocks just roll through my water bed so I can’t feel it.

@Dutchess_III I have been flipped out of a water bed by a relatively minor quake….

Well there goes my theory!

Alaska had a 7.2 quake a couple years ago. Believe or or not, they called a smaller shake that originated in the same area the big one was centered an aftershock two years plus after the major shake. They explained it all very scientifically and it made sense using their criteria but don’t ask me to share because it sorta went into the brain, jumbled around awhile until I decided I knew as much as I wanted to know, and has largely flitted away. And, no, we didn’t sleep outside when the big one happened even tho’ it rattled my friend’s house where I was staying to recuperate from a badly broken arm and stuff flew out of cabinets and a couple free standing cabinets went boom because it was somewhere in the vicinity of -20 degrees out at the time.

Ironically, when I was finally able to return home I discovered that very little had even been dislodged at my house, including a cup of tea I’d left sitting on the coffee table. Go figure. Just the luck of the draw of location, location, location. Overall, tho’ I did feel the most recent good sized shake (like CA, AK tends to move pretty consistently under our feet and we don’t notice most of it), I seem to have lucked out and be in a relatively stable area. The weirdest quake experience I’ve felt was actually a minor one but it was sorta like riding a wave. Felt like I was in a small boat riding a gentle wave motion. Kinda neat in a way, but usually just a quick shake or two.

I should note that the 7.2 was big enough to cause a couple overpasses to collapse and split open a couple sections of road that must be practically atop fault lines. Out airport, a major one for international travel into Anchorage, was okay but some of the air traffic controllers had to somehow resort to moving into vehicles with laptops and guiding in planes that couldn’r really divert in the immediate aftermath. Scary time for many and the aftershocks immediately after seemed like they’d never end, ranging from mild to some pretty good shakers.

There was one that we felt in North Georgia a couple years ago. Around 2014 – maybe 2015. Its center was in mid-South Carolina, but we could feel the shaking here. I remember my daughter phoned me and asked – did we just have a quake?

Chances are 40% plus New Madrid will blow in the next 50 years. I’m saving all my earthquake points for that.
Most of ours are 3.9 or less so we don’t really pay much attention.
Interesting to read accounts and helpful hints!