First off, thanks for your concern. I was just thinking that I should post an update on ETS. As I type this, I just felt a short jolt of an after shock. Just to keep us all on edge.

In its effects on Anchorage and the surrounding populated area, this M 7.0 is without doubt the most significant quake since 1964. While there have been other more powerful quakes (notably the M 7.9 Denali Fault quake), they were relatively far from population centers. But overall, we were very lucky. While there was significant damage to some roads and infrastructure, and somewhat less severe damage to homes and other structures, there has been no loss of life and very few injuries. Some, but thankfully few, houses sustained significant structural damage. At least one home burned. Many parts of town lost power, most for just a short time. A lot of damage in some buildings from sprinklers going off, falling ceiling tiles, etc. But most people came through with just broken crockery and jangled nerves.

In my case I was just sitting down at my laptop with a cup of coffee when it hit. It spilled half a cup of coffee, partly on my laptop. Lots of stuff knocked off of shelves. Some broken glass to clean up. One big, over full bookcase toppled completely over, leaving a big mess to pick up. A freezer in the garage "walked" a half a foot. But thankfully, so far I haven't noticed any signs of structural damage to our house.

Rumors spread wildly. As I noted above, there was some relatively minor damage to some public buildings. But at one point we heard that an entire floor collapsed at on of our main hospitals (a totally bogus rumor). One very persistent false rumor was that "they" were predicting another, even larger quake, to happen "within the hour". Apparently this was the result of people misunderstanding, quoting out of context, and wildly embellishing an entirely legit USGS note on the probability of after shocks. And of course the news media persists in showing over and over again the same scenes of a few spots with severe road damage.

All that being said, it will be awhile before we know the full economic cost. Some roads and bridges sustained serious damage which will take awhile to fix, and some peoples commute will be complicated by detours. Lots of damage in buildings from broken water lines and sprinklers. (One friend had to rush to his business to protect his computers from water damage.) I understand a few areas are still without power. A few water mains in town are damaged. And lots and lots of broken glass, knickknacks, spilled food, etc.

But all in all, it could have been much worse. No loss of life, and relatively few injuries. The epicenter was just 12 km North of Anchorage, but fairly deep (about 40 km). Had the same M 7.0 quake been shallower, things would have been much, much worse.