A Taste of California Earthquake:

The first taste: I finally lived through it !!

Today, I was in a major earthquake for the first time in my life in which I actually felt some instinctive danger. First of all, we are all OK and nothing around me was damaged.
I had been in earthquakes a few times in the past. All of them were small minor ones until this afternoon. Today, it was far different.

Some friends of mine blamed and asked me before why I would go to California. They said there are so many natural and artificial perils in California that they would never think about living in it. Yes, I understand. California has practically everything we can imagine: wildfires, flash floods, mud slides, municipal bankruptcies, housing bubbles, riots, and most famous of all, earthquakes. You name it and we have it here. I had played golf while wildfires were burning not far from me. It wasn't that bad. I thought it just looked bad on television news. So far, I've never gotten into mud slides and floodings. Today, I finally got one of the major one, the earthquake. They would say that we are due for a big one any time soon.

It was unusually a windy and chilly day in Southern California. I watched PGA Shell Houston Open this afternoon until it ended with the trophy going to our favorite Anthony Kim. Then I wrote a short webpage about it and put it up at our website. Very soon after that, while we were preparing to go out for a dinner at our neighbor, suddenly I felt motions on my chair and floor. It was a very windy day but I knew it wasn't the wind. It was from much stronger force than anything I ever experienced.
Knowing that it was an earthquake, I asked my wife, "Can you feel it?"

Usually, the earthquake I knew passed quickly within a few seconds. This time it wasn't going away and kept shaking my feet on my carpeted  floor. It was more of sliding sideways movements rather than up-down trembles. At times, it became stronger. I started to realize that the entire building was trembling. It wasn't just the movement of my floor. It was as if some giant force was holding our three-story building and shaking it side to side.

By then my wife was trying to hold the china cabinet that has a lot of glasses in it.
I called her to forget about the china cabinet and we moved to the center of room and kneeled down between a large sofa and dinning table. In case of collapsing ceiling, there was only wooden structures above us and there was enough free spaces between these two relatively solid structures. At the moment, I couldn't think of any other safer spot  than that. I knew we should not be going under the table or under the door jam. Momentarily, I thought I would go outside to the patio but I thought it might not be safe as it has another floor above with a lot of concrete structures. I heard a loud noise as if something heavy just fell to the floor in the upstairs condo.

The quake lasted about 40 seconds and then suddenly it went away and everything turned into a strange quietness.

I went out the front door to the second floor walkway. Dr. Yang  from the first floor condo below me came out and shouted that it was an earthquake. I ran up to the third floor in bare feet by an outside stairway and knock at Judy's door. Judy said, "Oh, my, this was a big one!"  As I went into her unit, I found Colleen, the owner of the condo above me where I heard a loud noise during the quake. Judy's large dinning room chandelier was still swinging side to side. Colleen apparently got scared and ran into Judy's condo next door. Having known that she was OK, I told her that there might be something broken in her unit and then I returned to my unit.

Nothing were fallen or broken in my unit.

In about 15 minutes later, there was another aftershock lasting about 10 seconds in much less force. We called a few neighbors in the village within a mile radius. They reported the same experiences that we had. Fortunately, there were no damages or injuries.

Later, in the news, I found out a few things about the earthquake we had. Epicenter was at the north end of Baja California, Mexico at the magnitude of 7.2. It is at least about 200 miles from us.
For Baja, this was the worst one in the last 18 years. It wasn't from the San Anreas fault that runs along the California coast and on which we were sitting nearby. It came from a small fault in Mexico.
The quake at our area near Irvine, California was estimated to have been at the magnitude of about 4.

I won't forget about the first taste of this one for a while but it hasn't shaken my love of living in California.
Yes, I know... we are about due or overdue for a big one.
Was it just an appetizer for a beginner?