My first quake

After an uncharacteristically long stretch of 7-days of dining out with friends and visitors (miss you K!), I had a friend over for a drink Monday night – leading to an equally rare uninterrupted long stretch of nights involving red wine. So when I woke up with a jolt at 4am to everything shaking, I'm not totally surprised that it took me a second to figure out what was happening. My first thought was why is the full-length mirror in my bedroom (weighing a good 50 lbs) shaking? Then I realized, everything was shaking. Not just my room, or my building, but the ground. The world was shaking! It felt like the sky was falling. In total, it probably lasted less than a minute, but it felt like longer. I remember thinking, “oh.... this is it, this is the big one!!” It wasn’t like I had enough time to think of what I should do, or that I would have had any idea what to do... So when it ended I did with every other Los Angeleno also jolted out of bed likely did, I went back to sleep. 

A few hours later I woke up to a message on my blackberry asking if I was OK (thanks J!), a friend had heard there was an earthquake in LA. Yes there was, and thankfully yes I was. Most of my close friends out here hadn’t woken up or felt it, and I was able to alleviate any concerns before the news really spread East. I'll admit it’s a weird feeling to wake up and google “earthquake today in LA” to find out what had happened to you the night before... It was reported as a 4.4.  Not large by Haiti (7.0) or Chile’s (8.8) recent and utterly devastating standards.  But if I’d ever wondered what a 4.4 felt like, I now know.  And let me tell you, I can’t even begin to imagine the shock of a 7 or above. No thank you. 

There are almost 10,000 earthquakes every year in Southern California. Nearly everyday there's a quake. And although most of them go undetected in the 2 to 3 magnitudes, the fact alone is hard to ignore. 

So I’ve survived my first notable quake.  The “first-responders” were put on alert but news reports have no one reportedly injured, and aside from part of a freeway caving in (no surprise, with the horrific road conditions out here that could happen on a good day) all seems to be find in the city of la la.  Let’s hope it was my first, and LAST shake.

And shhhhhh, please don't tell my mom...

k