Today at 10:20 AM we had our statewide earthquake drill - a pretty simple process, really. Listening to the radio, I learned that the San Francisco area experienced a 4.0 this afternoon. One geologist described it as "a nice quake with sharp impulsive characteristics" (a reasonably accurate quote).

So now we describe earthquakes as if they were fine wines? I can hardly wait for the "full bodied, robust" quake....

I suppose it went pretty well. I was driving on the freeway, so I could not not "duck, cover, and hold on," per instructions that were broadcast on the radio. It is a very elementary drill, but the number of people and organizations participating seems to be growing. Several other states are having similar exercises.

Even a very elementary exercise like this ought to pay off when quakes arrive.

I wonder, did anyone on the forum feel the quake?

Until reading your post,I knew diddly squat about a Statewide anything!

They did a lot more publicity last year. This year I didn't hear anything about it on the radio or anything. The only reason I knew about it was because I'm on our company's BERT team (Building Emergency Response Team).

HJ

I've got mixed feelings. One part of me says ... "let's get this thing over and done with". Another part says ... "You know that L. A. is not even remotely ready for the real thing". They aren't.

I put up a display in the cafeteria of my work location.
Two large pages showing some pix from old quakes, and some key points of vulnerability in Los Angeles. Like places where major freeway interchanges, skyscrapers, and refineries are built on top of fault lines (or very close).

I did add some verbal commentary based on stuff that Sue posted from another thread on this Web site. Basically, this was Sue's analysis about why it is impossible for a fleet of helicopters to ferry emergency water into a disaster zone the size of So. California.

I hope some of this stuff sinks in. :-)

Pete2

I'm not sure if there's an anniversary this week (not 1906, that's in April IIRC) but I've seen three different TV episodes on California earthquakes this week. All of them equally depressing, whether it's about a major quake in LA, in the the San Francisco Bay Area, or even in the Sacramento area.

Funny, there were two different Sacramento disaster episodes I saw this week--first an earthquake that breaches the levee system in the delta, flooding the city, farmland, and cutting off central and southern California from the California Aquaduct. The other one was also about the levee system there, but this time, it's just an unusually wet winter that eventually overtops or washes away the levees.

From what one of the shows mentioned, FEMA ranks Sacramento as the second most catastrophic urban flooding scenario after New Orleans. Well, we know the NOLA prediction came true...

Sacramento... flooding... in the middle of that thick, thick tule fog! Or an earthquake during the tule fog... Those are a couple of scary scenarios I would like to miss.

Sue

If it makes even a handful of people stop and think, and maybe buy some bottled water or extra canned goods, it's an improvement over the alternative.

Sue

Check out the photo that accompanies this one LA Times article on the Shakeout. The guy takes cover under a shopping cart. I had never even considered the possibility of doing that!

Just to focus on this one little thing, what do folks think of that? Could you ever see yourself doing that? I think most of us have seen video from major quakes like Fukushima and numerous other locales, so we have a sense of how violent or how long a major quake can be and what can happen in a supermarket-like setting.

Rather than mimicking what that guy did, if I did want to take shelter in that situation with a shopping cart, I think it would make more sense to tip over the shopping cart onto its side and then taking cover inside it. It should provide more protection for more of your body than just hiding your head under the bottom rack of the shopping cart. With young children, this method would also seem very practical and pretty natural for them, since it seems like a natural play behavior.

One nightmare scenario for me is shopping at a big warehouse store when the shaking starts. You'd have tons of merchandise stacked 35 feet high over your head. Sometimes I think ducking underneath the stack should be safest if a more open area wasn't close by since the merchandise is most likely to tip over into the aisle.

However, I do recall seeing one video of a stack collapsing straight down (I forget if it was a quake video). Although they always say not to run outside when you're inside a building, or run inside when you're outside because of the risk of falling debris along the outside of the building, I think the warehouse store is one situation where if an exit was close by, I would consider bolting outside to get away from all that stacked merchandise.

If I were in certain sections of a home improvement store, like Home Depot, that would be another exception to the "don't rush outside," I think. A rack of toilets or lumber or roofing material falling on me would be "not a good thing," too.

Arney, you probably didn't think of that because you're not stupid enough.

A plastic cart? Plastic... the stuff that shatters when crushed?

What's the point of protecting your head when the entire rest of your body is stretched out, crushed under falling debris?

Personally, I would try to get to the end of the aisle. Upright or tipped over, curling up at the end of the shelves should give more support, even if the roof collapsed. At least you would have a chance.

And if you're in a Big Box store, most of them are tilt-up, the second-worst type to be in (A-#1 worst being older brick/masonry). And don't you love how most of them don't have long straight aisles anymore?

Seattle Office of Emerg. Mgmt. : "Older brick buildings (unreinforced masonry) and tilt up construction is the most vulnerable."

Sue