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Friends in Need When Nature Hiccups, Natural Disasters forum
belleraphon1
post Jul 29 2008, 11:23 PM
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Sincerely hope all you UMSFers on the West Coast are OK! Read Emily's blog....
http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00001576/

Widfires and now an earthquake... scary...

Concern from an Ohioan who only worries about getting snowed in once or twice a winter season.

Craig

p.s. With global climate change this forum may get a few posts or two in this century!
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nprev
post Jul 30 2008, 01:43 AM
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Yes, you do!!! Give it up, big guy!


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A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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ElkGroveDan
post Jul 30 2008, 05:48 AM
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QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 29 2008, 05:43 PM) *
Yes, you do!!! Give it up, big guy!


My wife and I had just moved into a new rental house in Northridge, California in 1994 right before our first baby was due. She was due Tuesday January 18th, but since she was breach the doctor decided to due a C-section the Wednesday before at the hospital near my wife's work, Glendale/Verdugo just 15 minutes down the 118 Freeway. So they finally kicked us out of the hospital Friday night and I was terrified that this fragile little baby was now our responsibility. I spent the weekend fussing around the two of them until Sunday night Allison finally told me to get lost and get some fresh air. So I went over to the Northridge Mall a few blocks from our home and browsed new baby cribs since we were just borrowing one to get started. I wandered around a department store called Bullocks and at closing time I was the last one out as they locked the doors behind me - in fact it would later turn out that I was the last customer to ever shop in that store. Monday was a holiday for me so I stayed up late with Allison watching TV and trying to get used to this whole idea of being a parent. We went to bed around midnight.

Around 2:00 she woke us up crying and Allison nursed her back to sleep. Then again around 4:00. Shortly after that, (I still remember the clock said 4:26) she woke up crying again. Allison said "She can't be hungry I just fed her. So I said, "well maybe its the diaper. Now is as good a time as any for me to figure this out. You stay in bed". So we were among the very few who had the lights on at that hour. There was nothing wrong with the diaper so I began to discuss with Allison whether or not to put a new one on. As I was standing there (4:31) I felt a really smooth rocking swell cross the house the way a small wave goes under a boat on a calm lake. I can still hear my words to this day. I said out loud "Funny that kind of felt like an earth...." and I never finished the sentence. It felt like a truck hit the house. I saw everything twist and fall and fly through the air and the lights went out as I reached down and scooped up the baby off the bed. As I took three giant steps to the bathroom doorway I could feel my knees hit the floor between bounces. The roar and the noise was deafening as everything in the house that could break broke at once. I held onto the doorway with one arm and the baby with the other as that house rocked back and forth like a martini shaker. I was only five or six feet away from Allison who was screaming "Where's the baby!!?" and the roar was so loud she couldn't hear my shout back that I had her. Allison landed knee first into a picture frame and sliced open her knee. When the first round of shaking stopped I let go of the wall and pulled her up next to me and then the shaking began again.

When the shaking seemed to stop we stood there in the pitch black half naked and in bare feet with devastation all around us. Then all of a sudden BANG! and crash, a window had popped out of its twisted aluminum frame and fallen out into the back yard, then bang, bang bang more windows kept popping out. I told her to stay put while I went to get a flashlight. Three times I started down the hall and three times the shaking resumed and I would go running back to hold them. When I finally did make it to the kitchen to find the flashlight I stepped on broken glass that darn near sliced my toe off. When I finally made it back to Allison we started looking for clothing so we could get outside - it was really cold even for Los Angeles that morning, like the low 40s or so. A neighbor came pounding on our door since by then everyone on the street was outside except for us. I grabbed a dozen or so blankets and we finally went out to the car and I started it up and put on the heater. The rocking back and forth in the car continued until sunup and then for the next several days. I tried to take Allison to the hospital to get her knee stitched (and my toe) later that morning but the place was a zoo and we were worried about having a newborn baby around all those crowds and confusion. So we spent the next night in our Ford Bronco SUV with the dog and the cat. The next morning it took something like three hours to make the normally 20 minute drive to Burbank airport. I put Allison and the baby on a plane to San Francisco where her mother lived and I didn't see them for the next three weeks as I worked to make the house livable again. In hindsight I think of how lucky we were that the baby was delivered when she was. That morning the 118 freeway that I would have taken to the maternity hospital collapsed about 20 feet. Several people drove over the edge in the dark, one was killed. The department store I had been in the night before crumpled completely in half and a custodian was crushed under a parking structure there. An apartment building a half mile down the street from us collapsed and 17 people were killed. I think ultimately 57 people were killed that morning by the Northridge earthquake. Everything we owned that could break, did break with the exception of our wedding china which was still packed in boxes from our recent move.

I can't seem to find any scanned pictures from that week (I have them somewhere but its mostly a memory I try to forget), but here's what the baby and I looked like the day before.
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stevesliva
post Jul 30 2008, 04:31 PM
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QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Jul 30 2008, 01:48 AM) *
I didn't see them for the next three weeks as I worked to make the house livable again.

Eek... terrifying. I hate to ask as it probably doesn't make anyone thrilled to recall, but was anything covered by insurance? I've heard that it is prohibitively expensive, so generally houses are uninsured against quake damage.
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Posts in this topic
- belleraphon1   Friends in Need When Nature Hiccups   Jul 29 2008, 11:23 PM
- - mcaplinger   QUOTE (belleraphon1 @ Jul 29 2008, 03:23 ...   Jul 29 2008, 11:32 PM
- - nprev   Thanks for thinking of us, Belleraphon; no biggie,...   Jul 29 2008, 11:37 PM
|- - belleraphon1   QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 29 2008, 06:37 PM) Tha...   Jul 29 2008, 11:44 PM
- - belleraphon1   "Portions of Ohio are, of course, in the New ...   Jul 29 2008, 11:38 PM
- - nprev   Well, I'll puff up my chest and act all brave ...   Jul 29 2008, 11:55 PM
- - volcanopele   Meh, I lived in Kansas for 13 years and saw a gran...   Jul 30 2008, 12:05 AM
- - belleraphon1   Have lived in Ohio my entire life.... Only torna...   Jul 30 2008, 12:21 AM
- - nprev   Ah, ground-dancing ain't so bad... Here...   Jul 30 2008, 12:47 AM
- - belleraphon1   nprev... good story... Nature is awesome and imp...   Jul 30 2008, 01:16 AM
- - ElkGroveDan   Oh come on Nick. I disagree. Do I have to tell m...   Jul 30 2008, 01:18 AM
- - nprev   Yes, you do!!! Give it up, big guy...   Jul 30 2008, 01:43 AM
|- - ElkGroveDan   QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 29 2008, 05:43 PM) Yes...   Jul 30 2008, 05:48 AM
|- - stevesliva   QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Jul 30 2008, 01:48 A...   Jul 30 2008, 04:31 PM
- - Juramike   I was in my lab on the 6th floor of the UC Berkele...   Jul 30 2008, 03:30 AM
- - nprev   Ye gods, Mike! That had to be beyond terrifyin...   Jul 30 2008, 03:35 AM
|- - Juramike   QUOTE (nprev @ Jul 29 2008, 11:35 PM) In ...   Jul 30 2008, 04:24 AM
- - dvandorn   We're talking the October 17, 1989 World Serie...   Jul 30 2008, 04:41 AM
- - dmuller   Just out of curiosity ... does the JPL have backup...   Jul 30 2008, 06:12 AM
|- - Del Palmer   QUOTE (dmuller @ Jul 30 2008, 07:12 AM) J...   Jul 30 2008, 09:54 PM
- - mchan   Like Juramike, I was also in school, but in San Fr...   Jul 30 2008, 06:38 AM
- - nprev   ...Dan, I stand corrected. Earthquakes are indeed ...   Jul 30 2008, 10:24 AM
- - jasedm   Glad to hear all ok over there. We're very luc...   Jul 30 2008, 01:30 PM
|- - tedstryk   Scariest natural disaster I have experienced was a...   Jul 30 2008, 02:00 PM
|- - AndyG   QUOTE (jasedm @ Jul 30 2008, 02:30 PM) We...   Jul 30 2008, 03:03 PM
- - djellison   I felt the Market Rasen one - it woke Helen and I ...   Jul 30 2008, 01:37 PM
- - ilbasso   I was born during an earthquake on Yokosuka Naval ...   Jul 30 2008, 01:48 PM
- - dvandorn   I was born and raised in central Illinois, not far...   Jul 30 2008, 01:55 PM
|- - ilbasso   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 30 2008, 09:55 AM) ...   Jul 30 2008, 02:19 PM
- - TheChemist   I live in one of the most seismogenic places on Ea...   Jul 30 2008, 02:05 PM
- - Greg Hullender   I was on the 14th floor of the Metro Tower in Fost...   Jul 30 2008, 03:24 PM
- - elakdawalla   Wow, Dan, that's a harrowing story. I wasn...   Jul 30 2008, 04:28 PM
|- - nprev   QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Jul 30 2008, 08:28 A...   Jul 30 2008, 10:15 PM
- - elakdawalla   Very few private insurance companies write earthqu...   Jul 30 2008, 04:37 PM
|- - stevesliva   QUOTE (elakdawalla @ Jul 30 2008, 12:37 P...   Jul 30 2008, 04:56 PM
- - edstrick   It's not a safe universe to live in. I don...   Jul 31 2008, 10:12 AM
- - nprev   True enough...but I have a vision of myself at age...   Jul 31 2008, 08:04 PM
- - dvandorn   Gee, Nick, it sounds like you're a good candid...   Aug 1 2008, 04:09 AM
|- - nprev   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Jul 31 2008, 09:09 PM) ...   Aug 1 2008, 05:16 PM
- - ilbasso   Funny, was just re-reading Ray Kurzweil's pape...   Aug 1 2008, 04:43 PM
- - belleraphon1   To all our UMSF friends (and everyone else) in the...   Aug 31 2008, 10:44 PM
- - CosmicRocker   Luckily, Gustav's bark was worst than his bite...   Sep 3 2008, 06:22 AM
- - nprev   Yeah...I'm old-fashioned. I haven't even i...   Sep 4 2008, 03:18 AM
- - imipak   It sounds like it's going to get rather hairy ...   Sep 12 2008, 07:17 PM
- - belleraphon1   For all in Ike's path... heart is with you. ...   Sep 13 2008, 12:01 AM
- - volcanopele   hmm, well, I guess it is a good thing they moved n...   Sep 13 2008, 12:37 AM
- - Tman   Now this picture from the partly flooded Galveston...   Sep 13 2008, 03:51 PM
- - CosmicRocker   QUOTE (imipak @ Sep 12 2008, 01:17 PM) .....   Sep 16 2008, 05:08 AM
- - hendric   Some pictures from Ike http://www.boston.com/bigpi...   Sep 16 2008, 08:31 PM
- - CosmicRocker   We finally made it back home tonight. The county ...   Sep 17 2008, 04:00 AM
|- - djellison   QUOTE (CosmicRocker @ Sep 17 2008, 05:00 ...   Sep 17 2008, 06:55 AM
- - Tman   Good to hear that! The devastation around the ...   Sep 17 2008, 11:42 AM
- - paxdan   Yikes   Sep 17 2008, 01:55 PM
- - imipak   Glad you and your family and house are OK, Mr Rock...   Sep 17 2008, 08:15 PM
- - CosmicRocker   QUOTE (Tman @ Sep 17 2008, 06:42 AM) ... ...   Sep 18 2008, 05:29 AM
- - CosmicRocker   I've had people wanting more images of our hom...   Sep 23 2008, 07:18 AM
- - belleraphon1   From Emily's blog... http://www.planetary.org...   Oct 13 2008, 10:06 PM
- - nprev   Thanks, Craig. It's much closer to Emily than ...   Oct 14 2008, 12:06 AM
|- - dvandorn   QUOTE (nprev @ Oct 13 2008, 07:06 PM) Got...   Oct 15 2008, 04:20 AM
|- - nprev   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Oct 14 2008, 08:20 PM) ...   Oct 16 2008, 12:48 AM
- - Shaka   OK, Tinman! We won't expect many coherent...   Oct 14 2008, 05:19 AM
|- - ustrax   Nicholas, Be Brave! We'll be here crossin...   Oct 14 2008, 10:20 AM
- - djellison   Youch http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets.....   Oct 14 2008, 12:30 PM
|- - elakdawalla   QUOTE (djellison @ Oct 14 2008, 04:30 AM)...   Oct 14 2008, 07:42 PM
- - nprev   Thanks for the good wishes, guys; it's much ap...   Oct 14 2008, 01:30 PM
- - belleraphon1   Yes, nprev... best wishes... Craig   Oct 14 2008, 04:16 PM
- - nprev   The response really is amazing as Emily described....   Oct 14 2008, 11:56 PM
- - CosmicRocker   Well, all I can hope for would be the best for all...   Oct 15 2008, 05:50 AM
- - dvandorn   Hey, Nick -- tried to leave you a PM and your mail...   Oct 17 2008, 06:15 AM
- - nprev   Thanks, Doug; cleaning on inbox accomplished! ...   Oct 18 2008, 01:12 AM
- - nprev   Sorry to resurrect this, but seems appropriate. Ar...   Feb 3 2009, 01:23 AM
|- - helvick   Don't know about the UK but here in this part ...   Feb 3 2009, 04:47 AM
||- - Tesheiner   QUOTE (helvick @ Feb 3 2009, 05:47 AM) ...   Feb 3 2009, 11:20 AM
|- - Stu   QUOTE (nprev @ Feb 3 2009, 01:23 AM) Sorr...   Feb 3 2009, 06:36 AM
- - stevesliva   A little ribbing... QUOTE London, the city that s...   Feb 3 2009, 05:09 AM
- - ngunn   Well I'm snowed in here in Wales, but that...   Feb 3 2009, 09:39 AM
- - imipak   Getting snowed in can be inconvenient, and I guess...   Feb 4 2009, 09:50 PM
- - dmuller   Though I am not directly affected, we have major b...   Feb 7 2009, 11:55 AM
|- - ustrax   QUOTE (dmuller @ Feb 7 2009, 11:55 AM) Le...   Feb 8 2009, 03:35 PM
|- - dmuller   QUOTE (ustrax @ Feb 9 2009, 02:35 AM) It ...   Feb 9 2009, 12:38 AM
- - nprev   The enormous magnitude of this disaster is becomin...   Feb 10 2009, 03:03 PM
- - nprev   Unfortunate to resurrect this thread yet again, bu...   Apr 7 2009, 12:10 AM
|- - MahFL   My condolencies too. I'd rather cope with hur...   Apr 7 2009, 04:24 PM
- - nprev   Breaking news...We just had a 5.0 (prelim) quake i...   May 18 2009, 03:47 AM
- - Astro0   USGS is reporting it as a 5.0 with 3.1 aftershocks...   May 18 2009, 04:06 AM
- - nprev   No sweat! That was a good one, though; all my ...   May 18 2009, 04:20 AM
- - brellis   It was a mild rolling quake in Santa Monica. It ...   May 18 2009, 04:31 AM
- - RoverDriver   I am in La Crescenta and definitely felt it. Both...   May 18 2009, 04:40 AM
- - nprev   Should've mentioned I'm in Torrance. Real ...   May 18 2009, 04:49 AM
- - dvandorn   Hey, guys -- spent a good hour in the basement of ...   Aug 19 2009, 10:28 PM
|- - ElkGroveDan   QUOTE (dvandorn @ Aug 19 2009, 02:28 PM) ...   Aug 19 2009, 10:52 PM
|- - dmuller   QUOTE (ElkGroveDan @ Aug 20 2009, 08:52 A...   Aug 20 2009, 12:58 AM
- - nprev   Oh, crap. Sure hope everything's alright, oDou...   Aug 19 2009, 10:36 PM
- - dvandorn   Well, I'm home, everything is just fine here. ...   Aug 20 2009, 02:12 AM
- - nprev   Uh...don't take this wrong, dude, but I hope y...   Aug 20 2009, 04:10 AM
- - CosmicRocker   I too, am glad to hear that all was well, after al...   Aug 20 2009, 04:51 AM
- - nprev   It's fire time again here in SoCal. According ...   Aug 29 2009, 08:07 AM
- - ilbasso   Maybe Spirit sent those fire clouds along...if Spi...   Aug 29 2009, 02:37 PM
- - nprev   Fire approaching the Mt. Wilson Observatory (webca...   Aug 31 2009, 02:54 AM
- - djellison   This one is nasty. I"m keeping track with fr...   Aug 31 2009, 06:30 AM
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