Dodging The Earthquake Bullet

There was little damage. Why not?

intensity.jpgAnother full day in Connecticut with my parents in town.

I’m a little late getting this posted, but I did want to speak briefly about today’s Southern California earthquake. It was originally posted as a 5.8 and then ‘downgraded’ to a 5.4.

It was felt over a large area with plenty of people. There was little damage. Why not? I suppose California is now well built. New construction takes earthquakes into account.

It was also reasonably far from Los Angeles, 27 miles–out in the boonies of Orange County. If my map reading is any good, the epicenter is in a rural park. It was also pretty deep and right now, not assignable to a known fault line.

From the Orange County Register: The quake also cracked plaster and loosened ceiling tiles at the Nixon Presidential Library & Museum in Yorba Linda.

You take the good with the bad.

The USGS says “Most likely, the recent mainshock will be the largest in the sequence. However, there is a small chance (APPROXIMATELY 5 TO 10 PERCENT) of an earthquake equal to or larger than this mainshock in the next 7 days.” I sent a note to friend a moment ago, “You tell me, is there any utility to it?” In other words, it’s a provocative sentence, but useless in real life.

There will be another quake near Los Angeles… a worse quake… a tragic quake. It’s just a matter of when. But so is the next Hurricane Katrina and Barneveld tornado. Life is full of chances we all take.

2 thoughts on “Dodging The Earthquake Bullet”

  1. I was on the phone with a co-worker in our LA office at the moment the earthquake hit. There were two shocks separated by a few seconds. I actually heard the rumbling on the phone. Amazing…my first earthquake, sort of.

  2. Actually, Chino Hills is a heavily populated area. The reason there was so little damage is because everything has to be built to certain earthquake standards. We only live about 8 miles away and nothing even fell off the shelves, though the house sure did shake. This was my wife’s first quake.

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