Speaking of the Whittier Narrows quake:
I was a freshman in high school, and my best friend and her brother had just gotten on the school bus. He sits down and the bus starts rocking from side to side. I looked at him and said, "Jim! Stop rocking the bus!" Then I looked outside and all the telephone poles across the street were moving back and forth, the birds had taken flight, and my bus driver, Mrs. Grow (bless her heart, she was awesome) fought valiantly to get the big yellow school bus into the emergency brake. I started laughing because I was so scared, I didn't know what else to do.
I felt the aftershocks all day at school (my school was in Cerritos) and went home to find my room in shambles (I lived in Downey at the time). You see, this earthquake I remember most because it was two days before my birthday and the nasty aftershock we had that next Sunday was a day after my birthday. I'll never forget the date of Whittier Narrows: October 1, 1987. Freak out city.
My bedroom faced north and got the worst of it. My mom lost a lot of her antique plates and the dogs were found hiding under my bed. Poor guys. What's really odd is my mom had antique crystal in one of those really beautiful display cases. It was nestled in the corner of two walls. Not one thing in that display case broke. Freakin' amazing.
I know I choose to live in California, but holy freakin' cow... I hate the sound, the *feel* of the earth swaying and shaking beneath me. I went to a science museum where they had an earthquake simulator. Stupid me actually went on it. Let's just say I was shaking so bad when I got off that I ended up going home.
The sound scares me most, because it's like you can hear the earth rumbling and the sound reaches you before the movement does.... then after the movement stops, the earth is still rumbling and it's deadly quiet. All the animals stop, and the world seems to have stopped.
EEK. Sorry for freaking everybody out. You're right Martha, I don't think I'd want to go through a tornado. I wouldn't want to go through a hurricane, either. I do find plate techtonics fascinating, but holy freakin' cow, I don't want to go through the plate techtonics.
Moonie