We were rocking and rolling in Seattle today!

You guys who originally hail from the left coast probably don't wet your pants when the earth shakes, but for us northeastern boys, it's quite disconcerting.

I actually had to race home from work 5 minutes before it hit. At 50 mph+ on I 90, I didn't feel a thing! It was very odd: I heard about it on the radio, but it wasn't clear to me that I was in the area that had been affected.

When I got home the power was off, stuff from high shelves had fallen on the floor, and our pictures were askew. If it weren't for the power and pictures, I would have never realized we had been hit--it appears that earthquake damage and damage created by three-year-old twins is quite similar.

So, anyone got any good earthquake stories?

Wow, you were at the epicenter, sort of.

Heh - as a father of twins, I appreciate the similarities.

I remember a mild earthquake felt in St. Louis when I was a kid. It just rattled the house for a moment. Earthquakes worry me, though, because we could have a large one in our area. I think we might actually be at greater risk for some kind of really big earthquake than even California.

It's too bad you didn't feel it. That's a bit of a gyp, like dropping some quarters into the Magic Fingers machine in a hotel room and not having the bed shake.

Having been through multiple earthquakes, you weren't "gypped." The last Northridge quake in So. Cal completely freaked me out for months; I was a nervous wreck... I thought I was going to die that day. I was about five miles from the epicenter.

You think you have faith in the earth being there when you take a step and suddenly it betrays you and starts moving...

You're lucky; I guess the geology of the region, and depth of the quake, means you're unlikely to get aftershocks. With the Northridge quake, we were getting 5.5 aftershocks for months. The first day we probably had 20-30 quakes. We started cleaning up, rehanging pictures, stuff like that, then the 5.5 aftershock hit and knocked everything BACK off the walls. We left things off the walls for a while.

Man, our place was trashed. The fridge managed to move into the center of the kitchen, one of those giant multi-story Craftstman tool chests was upside down, all of the walls in the backyards of the entire neighborhood all fell down in the exact same direction (the earth sorta shifted, and they didn't)... I5 was directed for a few days hours my little sidestreet (the freeway collapsed, and a sinkhole had opened up in the main road... it was not a pleasant time. My 30 minute commute became a three hour commute due to a lack of freeways... my former college was practically destroy (CSUN), I lost some friends when their apartment collapsed on them... it was not pleasant.

And oh joy, I'm flying out to Seattle in a couple of weeks for Gamestock. Just what I wanted, more major earthquake damage.

I was just thinking that last year, today, some of us were at Gamestock. I can see it now, 10 odd journalists all joking that they came to Microsoft and ended up previewing Quake 4.

It is to laugh.

~Bub

"I lost some friends when their apartment collapsed on them... it was not pleasant. "

Sounds a bit more than unpleasant. In geologic time, we're all irrelevant anyway. Earthquakes are a good reminder of that.

wumpus http://www.gamebasement.com

"I can see it now, 10 odd journalists all joking that they came to Microsoft and ended up previewing Quake 4"

Good one...save it for Beatdown :)

Thanks Bernie,
but The Mushroom did a similar joke involving the India Quake of last month. It was in such horrifically bad taste it put me off of even contemplating doing that kind of humor.

For example, a joke immediately came to mind involving Submarine Simulations (or even Submarine Titans) and Japanese fishing boats, but then I thought about how awful that joke could turn out and how not funny that incident actually is.

Gimmie a good non-deadly tragedy to make fun of any day.... I mean, didn't people die in Seattle?

~Bub
"Comedy = Tragedy + Time"

"Gimmie a good non-deadly tragedy to make fun of any day.... I mean, didn't people die in Seattle?"

Last I saw there was one death attributed to the quake. Pretty remarkable, considering the severity.

I'm glad to hear that!
And, yeah, it is amazing what good engineering can do. That India quake wasn't much worse than this one and look at the difference in damage and lives lost.

Anyway, it was kinda funny seeing Gates book outta that conference like that....

~Bub

not sure seattle could have handled a 7 richter quake if it was less than a few miles from surface. . .luckily it was 35 miles deep whereas the india quake was pretty close to the sruface.

not even great engineering will stop a massive quake like india's. nature could care less about our engineering acumen.

etc

"Last I saw there was one death attributed to the quake. Pretty remarkable, considering the severity. "

It's strange to think of it this way, but there would probably have been MORE deaths in the same period of time from violent crime if the quake haden't occured (I assume there aren't many armed robberies or murders for a few hours surrounding a major earthquake).

Check this out. It's a video of the earthqake from some bloke's desk in MS. About 1.5 mb.

http://www.nwlink.com/~elhajj/quake.zip

"not even great engineering will stop a massive quake like india's. nature could care less about our engineering acumen."

Not true at all, if by "stopping" the quake you really mean "minimizing loss of life." Every report I've read or heard about the Indian quake, from NPR to the NYT, emphasized that much of the damage was done to buildings which did not meet building codes, and were done "on the cheap" as many Third World developers skirt regulations for cost reasons. Several reports showed buildings that had survived the quake next to rubble that had once been buildings that had been built with ersatz materials. This is causing a political scandal in India right now. Whether it has any effect on building code enforcement remains to be seen.

Mark: I didn't realize you had twins to care for. By your ability to post and keep the front page updated on regular basis, I have to assume they're older, yes? Heh, I'll have to start emailing you for tips on getting more gaming time.

I have to confess I do feel a little gyped, not feeling the quake. But then I think how happy I am that my family and my property made it through without so much as a scratch and I get over it.

Steve: that's the first time I've heard a first person account of an earthquake that was so scary. I mean, I know it can be a horrific thing intelectually, but everytime the subject comes up asround here, it seems to be told by way of merry stories. Perhaps that's just human nature? A way of dealing with disaster? Back East we had hurricanes and it's the same sort of thing when people reminisce.

"I didn't realize you had twins to care for. By your ability to post and keep the front page updated on regular basis, I have to assume they're older, yes? Heh, I'll have to start emailing you for tips on getting more gaming time."

Turn-based games. When they were about two they would sit on my lap while I played HOMM. They enjoyed that game. They're almost 10 now.

The trick is to somehow include them, then you occupy them and free up your wife, so she'll be happy to have you play a computer game.

Otherwise, you have to be careful with your time.

"The trick is to somehow include them, then you occupy them and free up your wife, so she'll be happy to have you play a computer game"

Yep, I figured this out, too. But I guess I'll have to spread my wings and start plaing something other than sims.

It's really tough to do a decent lap in GPL with someone on my lap. Although it is quite fun to see them make pretend car noises and crash into one another. "There go your wheels!"

"The trick is to somehow include them, then you occupy them and free up your wife, so she'll be happy to have you play a computer game."

I'm going to remember that for when I have kids.

Thanks Mark!