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2014_08_24 Napa CA Earthquake — Parallax Forums

2014_08_24 Napa CA Earthquake

mindrobotsmindrobots Posts: 6,506
edited 2014-08-26 01:17 in General Discussion
I hope all our California friends are safe and sound after today's quake!

I imagine close counts in Horseshoes and Earthquakes!

Comments

  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2014-08-24 20:57
    Felt nothing in LA, but Napa apparently got jolted! Did the Rocklin crew feel it?

    http://news.yahoo.com/usgs-6-0-earthquake-shakes-northern-california-111129187.html
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2014-08-24 21:56
    To most Californians, 6.1 Richter scale is not much of an earthquake.

    Nonetheless, Napa is a rural community that has a lot of older buildings that may not have been upgraded. So there is damage and are injuries.

    It might be more worthwhile to use the Mercalli scale for this one. It is based mostly on the level of damage.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercalli_intensity_scale
  • Ken GraceyKen Gracey Posts: 7,392
    edited 2014-08-24 22:11
    I was with my family five miles from the epicenter. It was a shock you'd imagine in a horror movie - you don't know what's going on until you're awake and coherent. Is it a natural disaster, did someone enter the building, or what's going on? Once we figured out it was an earthquake my nerves were calmed a bit. The strangest thing was that we saw many power pole transformers blow up and illuminate the night sky. Driving back to Rocklin we crossed a six-inch rip across Highway 12, right on the Carneros Fault line. Caltrans was patching it and routing cars around the damage.

    I've experienced at least a half-dozen earthquakes but this one shook me far more. The land would lurch north, then south, escalating along the way. You'd hear sounds you can't quite imagine, too.

    Ken Gracey
  • Tracy AllenTracy Allen Posts: 6,664
    edited 2014-08-24 22:30
    Here in Berkeley we woke up at 3:30 am, a buildup to a couple of jolts, creaking sway of the house, the unmistakeable anxiety. Then it tapered off for another 15 or 20 seconds.

    It was naturally a big topic of conversation at my granddaughter's 7th birthday this afternoon, much nearer the epicenter in Benicia. "Did you feel it, and how, compared with '89?" (My granddaughter slept through it.) Areas on alluvial areas where the hardest hit, such as the area around the Napa River or fill areas near San Pablo Bay. They shake and reverberate like a bowl of jello. Lots of cracks in pavement.
  • NWCCTVNWCCTV Posts: 3,629
    edited 2014-08-24 22:55
    I have experienced a few quakes here in the Northwest. It definitely is an eye opener. The biggest one we had was the Nisqually quake in February 2001. I remember precisely what I was doing. To me, they tend to sound like a large truck going down the road. Any how, I certainly hope everyone is OK and are out of harms way.
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2014-08-25 02:15
    The Napa quake woke me up last night. I'm 60 miles away, so I went back to sleep.

    In 1989 I was on the second floor of a building looking out over a field. I saw the shock wave coming. It looked like a 6 foot tall wave on the ocean just rolling across the field. I was frozen like a deer in headlights. Fortunately the building was quake-proofed. I never knew there was a such thing as a double decker freeway until I saw the sandwiched I80 structure that night on TV. What a horror.

    Glad you're Ok Ken.
  • __red____red__ Posts: 470
    edited 2014-08-25 05:40
    jazzed wrote: »
    It looked like a 6 foot tall wave on the ocean just rolling across the field.

    I can't even begin to imagine what that would look like. Has anyone seen anything resembling this effect in video that can be linked?
  • davejamesdavejames Posts: 4,047
    edited 2014-08-25 07:24
    __red__ wrote: »
    Has anyone seen anything resembling this effect in video that can be linked?

    Search on the Alaska earthquake of the 1960s. Scary stuff.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2014-08-25 07:33
    __red__ wrote: »
    Has anyone seen anything resembling this effect in video that can be linked?

    Kobe earthquake.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3p7xt_U34pM
    Fukijima earthquake.
    Both have plenty of video.

    The Alaskan earthquake has a film taken on board a ship as the harbor went dry and then was hit by a tsunami.

    You might try Taiwan's Puli earthquake -- 10,000 killed and 100,000 homeless.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qppa7ijUy2s

    I was in the 1989 Loma Preita in San Francisco. I didn't see much as I was stopped at a red light in Golden Gate Park when it hit. It just seemed like six gorillas had suddenly jumped on the car.

    But I did have a friend that was crossing the San Francisco Bay Bridge and he claimed the whole bridge was moving in waves with the bay churning below. Being a native New Yorker, he took it hard.. a bit of PTSD for years afterwards.
  • msrobotsmsrobots Posts: 3,709
    edited 2014-08-25 20:57
    Ken Gracey wrote: »
    .... You'd hear sounds you can't quite imagine, too....
    Ken Gracey

    Yes. The sound is quite unique.

    Mike
  • jazzedjazzed Posts: 11,803
    edited 2014-08-25 23:11
    __red__ wrote: »
    I can't even begin to imagine what that would look like. Has anyone seen anything resembling this effect in video that can be linked?


    The best video I could find that even gets close to the effect I described on land is this one with the Gas Pumps starting at around 0:10.

    The best analog to the effect is a wide wave on an otherwise flat ocean surface near the beach just before cresting into a tube.
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2014-08-26 01:17
    My favorite video of an earthquake is the opening of the 1989 World Series at Candlestick Stadium in San Francisco.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3MhymxLS60

    The bottom line is that California earthquakes seem to have injured and killed less than those in Asia. I was in Taiwan for the Puli earthquake, but luckily Kaohsiung didn't suffer serious damage.
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