shake it

Had a small earthquake this morning, and it didn’t help that I was on the eleventh story of a twelve story building. It actually was a big earthquake (6.5, almost as bad as the Northridge quake in LA recently) but the center was over a hundred miles to the south. It rolled and rolled and the building swayed this way and that, felt like being on a big ship out at sea. I decided to sit under my desk for the ride. It didn’t feel that dangerous but I figured at any second it could decide to give a serious lurch and my 30 kilogram computer monitor could fly at me.

I hope the folks in San Luis Obisbo faired ok.

On the plus side, the USGS had set up an underground observatory recently very close to this quake. That fault has a major earthquake of this magnitude every 22 years but the last one was 31 years ago. They figured it was going to pop soon, so they dug a hole 1.4 miles down lined with concrete and peppered with scientific instruments. I hope they grabbed some good data. This was just a pilot hole, they were planning to dig one 2.4 miles deep over the next five years. Maybe they should reconsider digging that one and just live with the data they got this morning, if it will be another 22 years for the next one.

Did you feel it?

If you're new here, thanks for visiting! Please subscribe to my RSS feed and consider visiting my design-related blog and my meditation-related blog.