My dad worked in the Los Angeles County General hospital many years ago, when it was still called that. It’s within a couple of miles of downtown LA or close to that.
During one earthquake he was standing at one end of a hall in the basement or one of the lower floors when an earthquake hit. He tells me he actually watched a wave coming down the hall. He says it was quite prominent, a foot or two tall.
I’ve never had that experience. I have felt some major quakes, a few 6.5s and up to about a 7.2., but I have never been afraid of them. I don’t know why, but they don’t phase me much.
In 1972, I had a friend who opened a Mobil station at the corner of Pennsylvania and Foothill in La Cresenta, California. That morning the San Fernando Valley earthquake measured about 6.5. He saw the wave effect going down Foothill and it scare him something fierce. He was so rattled that he jumped in his car and drove home, about 1.5 miles away leaving the service station wide open.
This affected him for as long as I knew him, about 20 more years. He was deathly afraid of earthquakes.
I grew up in Missouri. Tornadoes worry me more than an earthquake. I’ve seen a pickup lifted up and left in the fork of a tree. I’ve seen a wide swath cut through Kansas City, nothing left in the path. I’ve seen every bit of a house blown away to it’s foundation, not a speck of anything left, except the brand new family refrigerator right where it belonged, not a scratch on it.
I have spent a five minute period with about ten massive lightening strikes within a half mile of my location. Several times I’ve been sitting in front of a picture window while a lightening bolt hit a tree about 75 feet away, right in front of me.
One Sunday evening the weather turned bad. As the storm came in, the sky in the area turned a yellow green. It just looked bad to me. I can’t explain it. The next thing we knew there was hail and as a kid I knew (at least thought I did that a tornado was iminent). As a kid it felt like I was a condemned person. My grandparents ingored my concerns.
The next morning we loaded up into the car and drove off to school. We didn’t make it without having to make a detour. One mile from our house a section of trees about 100 feet wide had been blown over the highway. There were about twenty trees down on the road. There was a path headed up toward my mom’s home. Sure enough, at the exact time I thought a tornado was near, it came within a few hundred feet of her home, just up the road and an eighth of a mile from my grandparents home (where I lived).
I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never felt the condemned man feeling like I have during storms in the midwest. Give me a 7.5er any day.
I don’t want to be a school marm or anything, but the 1972 quake you mentioned actually happened on February 9, 1971 at 6:01 AM, in Sylmar. I was a kid, living on Long Island, NY at the time, but I remember following it quite closely.
It’s interesting that you mentioned Missouri. Two of the biggest quakes that ever hit North America happened in Missouri, in December 1811 and January 1812, measuring over 8.0 on the Richter scale. The quakes woke up Thomas Jefferson in Monticello and rang church bells in Boston has a continent away. The quakes were centered on the New Madrid fault. A repeat performance today would devastate Memphis and St. Louis.
I lived in Santa Barbara for many years and experienced a quake close to 6.0 on August 13, 1978. There was a foreshock in May around 3.0 which woke me up. In Santa Barbara, however, I was more concerned about wildfires than earthquakes.
I live in Maine now, and there was a series of small earthquakes off the coast of Bar Harbor last fall. The only quake I felt was a 4.2 quake last October 2nd. It was different that a California quake....there was loud rumbling and banging; it sounded like Mac trucks were slamming into the house. Everything rattled. The quake caused massive landslides on the hiking trails in nearby Acadia National Park; a 200 ton boulder slid down a mountainside in one of the landslides. The quake was felt all over the State of Maine, but it caused only minor damage near the epicenter.
It scared me, it really did....and it was just little!...but I'd never felt one before.
Of course, three years ago, Florida had some of its worse hurricanes and we evacuated twice...
..but one can see hurricanes coming and plan accordingly.
Earthquakes are sudden.
Talking about her childhood in Texas, my mother said when they saw that sky, it was off to the storm cellar.