It was interesting, to say the least.
I live in Southern California and I believe that we are more prepared for an earthquake than any place on Earth. We have proof -- the Northridge quake. 57 deaths is an amazingly low number for an earthquake of that size. I am 3 miles from the epicenter and had power and gas back within 1 day!
And then after that we continue to refine the rules and procedures. THey run earthquake drills here at least twice a year and sometimes more frequently.
We in California may screw a lot of things up, but when it comes to Earthquake Preparedness we are the leader in the world.
Oh, and everyone I know has water and food for at least a week. And flashlights in every room (except for the newbies).
Well, you have to keep some things in mind:
1) It wasn't THAT big of an earthquake; energy release, and general destructive power, goes up 32 times for each whole number of magnitude (it's simple ground motion that goes up 10 times), so a magnitude 7-7.2 earthquake in the LA Basin, which is quite possible, is a whole new ballgame compared to a M 6.7 earthquake.
2) In both the Northridge and the San Fernando earthquake of 1971 a great deal of the energy of the quake was directed into largely unpopulated areas of the hills.
3) Northridge occured at the perfect time of day to minimize deaths.
Right after Northridge a lot of Japanese were shaking their heads at those stupid unprepared Americans and how much destruction they suffered and acting smugly confident and proud about their own readiness.
Of course, precisely one year later they had 6,000 people killed in Kobe.
I saw a lot of fairly uninformed similar smugness over the Bam Iran and San Simeon earthquakes, which were of similar magnitude and fairly close to each other timewise, but of course had vastly different levels of destruction and death tolls; however one was DIRECTLY under a fairly good-sized city, and the other was basically in the middle of nowhere.
We're going to have an earthquake that kills thousands in this country, and likely within the next 20 years.