To Those In Areas That Are Prone to Earthquakes

[Annie]

this sounds like decent advice. Actually I would assume the same could be said post Hurricane/Tornados:
http://www.caterina.net/archive/000979.html

PSA: Good info about what to do in an emergency

For those of you outside the Bay Area, today is the 100th Anniversary of the big San Francisco fire, a tremendous disaster. Near our house is the gold fire hydrant, Little Giant, that gets a birthday party every year since 100 years ago it saved the neighborhood. Some useful advice from Stewart Brand came in the mail today about what to do in an emergency:

What Rescuers Learned

* Right after an earthquake, nobody's in charge. You self-start, or nothing happens.

* Collect tools!

* If you can smell gas, turn it off.

* After an earthquake, further building collapse is not the main danger. Fire is.

* When you see a fire starting, do ANYTHING to stop it, right now.

* In any collapsed building, assume there are people trapped alive. Locate them, let them know everything will be done to get them out.

* Searching a building, call out, "Anybody in here? Anybody need help? Shout or bang on something if you can hear me."

* Give people who are trapped all the information you've got, and enlist their help. Treat them not as helpless victims but as an exceptionally motivated part of the rescue team.

* Join a team or start a team. Divide up the tasks. Encourage leadership to emerge.

* Most action in a disaster is imitative. Most effective leadership is by example.

* Bystanders make the convenient assumption that everything is being taken care of by the people already helping. That's seldom accurate.

* If you want to help, ask! If you want to be helped, ask!

* Volunteers are always uncertain whether they're doing the right thing. They need encouragement-from professionals, from other volunteers, from passers-by.

CERT: Community Emergency Response Teams training is available to anyone in the Bay Area. A friend of mine did it, and says she feels a lot more confident should there be, god forbid, an earthquake fire or other disaster.

LINK | 04:01 PM | TB

 

[007]

I guess it rumbles here in northern Nevada once and awhile. I've never felt it though. I should feel it when Caliqueernia falls off into the ocean though...

 

[PsuedoGhost]

I guess it rumbles here in northern Nevada once and awhile. I've never felt it though. I should feel it when Caliqueernia falls off into the ocean though...

lol You'd be suprised at how many faults exist in places where you'd never expect them. Denver for example has a bunch of em, but they havent been active for a long time so the vast majority of people are not even aware that they exist.

Best advice if you live in an Earthquake prone zone:

Do not put heavy objects up high.

 

[Eightball]

Last big one here in the bay area was the 1987 Loma Prieta earthquake. Can't forget that one as our power was out for 3 days, and my wifes brother and family lived with us for quite awhile as their home in the Santa Cruz mountains was destroyed. Ironically, they were at the S.F. Giants/Oakland A's World series that evening when the quake hit.

We got a call from them after they had reached their home in the mountains above us in the Santa Clara Valley. Basically, they said, "Can we come stay with you, we don't have a home anymore.".

They lived just a few miles from the Epicenter of the quake. I believe it was a 7.1 or.2. The only reason that damage wasn't more extensive over the entire S.F. bay area was that the duration of the quake was relatively short for such a magnitude........roughly 15-20 seconds. Imagine if it had rolled for closer to a minute. The bay bridge that lost a section of highway probably would have lost a lot more, and literally hundreds of thousands would have been homeless.

Much of San Francisco's bay front district near the Ferry Building, is built up on Bay Fill. Bay fill liquifies when shaken, and that's why S.F. got more damage than Silicon Valley/San Jose, even though San Jose was much closer to the epicenter.

I remember when that quake happened. I was sitting in the parking lot waiting for my middle son to finish soccer practice. You could literally see waves going across the soccer field as the turf heaved like ocean swells. All the kids were tumbled to the ground by the waves. I had to hold onto my steering wheel while parked as the shaking was so violent that I was trying to keep from being tossed around inside of my car.
*
In the days following the quake, everytime an after shock would occur, it would cause me and my family to go into a semi-shock mode. You felt on edge, and didn't know if things were going to shake real hard like the first tremor.

My elderly parents just sat down together in their hallway of their little tract home, and waited for the violent shaking and rolling to subside. They lost a lot of ceramic items that had sentimental value.

 

[Nienna]

I remember a tremor when I was a little girl. Other than that, we don't get many--if ANY-- earthquakes around here.