Earthquakes. NBD...for the most part.
The press and reactions to the 5.8 earthquake in the North East has had us Californians laughing most of the day
. Earthquakes are just a part of life here...like snow is in the Midwest. Having said that, I can't make too much fun of those easterners...or "yankees" as my dear friend Suzie would be yelling at me right now. If you didn't grow up with them, I'm sure earthquakes are terrifying, or maybe even interesting. You should ask my Creighton friends what my first few tornadoes were like...let's just say I thought the tornado siren was actually an air raid siren, now there is logic for you.
. Earthquakes are just a part of life here...like snow is in the Midwest. Having said that, I can't make too much fun of those easterners...or "yankees" as my dear friend Suzie would be yelling at me right now. If you didn't grow up with them, I'm sure earthquakes are terrifying, or maybe even interesting. You should ask my Creighton friends what my first few tornadoes were like...let's just say I thought the tornado siren was actually an air raid siren, now there is logic for you.
Every time one of these big earthquake happens (and I'm not implying this one was "big") I think about the GIANT Northridge earthquake in 1994...every Sourthern Californian that was coherent at the time has a Northridge story.
It's interesting for me to look back on it now since I was only 7 years old then. Not going to lie, I probably could have slept through it, for some reason I'd only wake up during the little earthquakes...in particular every single freaking after-shock of Northridge.
The quake started around 4:30am, a few seconds later I woke up to my mom yanking me out of bed, and under the door frame with the dog...while, for some reason, my dad (a native) ran straight for outside in a half-asleep stupor, yammering about finding out whose phone worked...traditionally what you do after power lines are done falling and transformers are done exploding. The rest of it is kind of a blur of shelves falling, drawers coming out of my dresser, and my basset hound howling. Maybe I have a mental block on it, but it's more of an interesting experience to me than a terrifying one.
After the ground finally stopped moving, my mom and I joined my dad outside with the rest of our neighbors...I'm still scarred to this day with the memory of seeing some of my neighbors in what they referred to as "pajamas". I don't remember too much damage in my neighborhood, I'm sure my parents could say otherwise...the bumps in the sidewalk were all of a sudden larger, bike riding and rollerblading was something akin to BMX after that. Oh, and that crack in the living room ceiling grew from maybe a foot long to extending halfway across the living room.
Once the reasonable hours of the morning rolled around, then we really saw what h
appened. Santa Monica definitely had it worse than we did. The hospital I was born in was reduced to about half the size it had been the day before. By far the worst damage had been done to the freeways...especially the Santa Monica 10...aka the busiest freeway in the United States...it just collapsed (as did a section of the 5). Followed by the worst 3 months of traffic I think any of us have ever seen. Luckily, since the quake happened so early the casualties were 
only in the 60s...had it happened a few hours later that number would be grossly higher.
To sum up...essentially the whole darn state was a mess for months (rebuilding took years, the new St. John's Hospital has only recently been completed). The amount of damage that it caused was shocking because of all the building precautions taken...like building houses out of stucco instead of brick...now we literally put buildings on wheels.
...Something that definitely sucked in school was having to do earthquake drills. It was fine when we were in elementary school, and could fit under our desks...but you try cramming into those stupid desks with the chairs attached when you are a sophomore in high school. All of us hoped that if a big one happened...it would happen during science class, where we had the big lab tables. In 5th grade we had a practice for "the big one"...I was leaving for Australia the next day...so freaking Mrs. Tucker made me be the injured kid, and I had to lay under a desk with a chair on top of me until the firemen came to rescue me (something I under appreciated at the time...if you've seen the MB firemen, you know what I mean). I then had to be wrapped up in all sorts of splints and brought out onto the field...where the rest of the school was corralled.
Come to think of it, we had an earthquake last week. Every time one happens you can tell who has been here a while/grew up here and who has not. The locals laugh and remark something to the effect of "well that was fun" while out of towners generally look totally horrified. I'm sure it's got to be pretty disconcerting the first time you feel and see the ground move under your feet.
So be cool East Coast, it was just a little tectonic plate movement...gotta keep you on your toes! You'll probably be on "tsunami" warning...but the Atlantic hardly has waves anyway.
