That recommendation, while indeed usual, is actually a myth - door frames are no stronger than any other particular part of a typical house. Apparently this urban legend derives from some famous images from earthquakes in Mexico and Turkey long ago, in which entire houses collapsed except for the door frames. But these were un-reinforced mud/adobe houses, where the door frames were the only parts with any kind of structural integrity to speak of. As someone accustomed to semi-regular earthquakes (including many well above 5.9), my only advice is to accept that there really isn't much you can do in the moment, and that it will typically be over with before you could put whatever master plan into effect anyway. If there's a huge, sturdy table right next to you, by all means throw yourself under it. Otherwise, just remain calm and hope for the best. In terms of planning ahead, all you can really do is check up on the structural soundness of your home, check which building codes were in effect when it was built, and consider moving somewhere newer/sturdier if you don't like what you find. The rest is in Mother Nature's hands.
Oh my wife now is a record . 14 years now . No more than 14 years and soon to be 15. She is like the first I fucked up good . A fairytale romance . We have the son that is going to save the world . Brilliant young man very gifted and even the state of Montana Has high hopes for that boy . His name is Lucifer , Just joking Lucien is his name . Is that funny Melek the father of Lucifer . Oh God I make my self laugh big laughs Ha Ha Ha . He was her last child before she went trough the change of life . Last hope so to speak as menopause is what it is . Miracle child if you ask me and if you knew him you would know instantly why I believe that . Well Me first child was the same . She taught her self to read at the ripe old age of 2 . Can you believe that . Shit I could not and I was witness to it . It still blows my mind even now that she is like 35 . Lets see bicentennial baby 76 minus 111 is 35 yeah Wow thank god I got that right
Venice Beach, now that brings back memories. yes lots of artists in that area. Also a very good place to people watch. Mussle Beach was interesting. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Oh you made Me laugh Klown Laugh . Yeah I know right were that is . A girl mad at her boyfriend picked me up right at that very spot and took Me home with her . So funny . She didn't tell me she had a boy friend until the next morning . Said she wanted to get back at him for leaving her alone for the week . Oh yeah Venice beach . The memories of youth . Got to love em . Trouble right here in river city . Hope that was not your girl friend Klown
Glad to hear your OK and from news reports there weren't any serious injuries from this. I've been in a couple when I lived in California and they were not very big, more like tremors rather than a full blown earthquake but still were very alarming. I was told to always get outside of any building and to not get near power lines. I was in a 6 story building when it stared swaying and I got out of it rather quickly. Again I'm glad all is well there and remain vigilant through the night there might be aftershock's which are smaller but still can be alarming.
This and That I think there is a certain amount of fatalism involved. If it's a big quake, there really isn't anywhere you can go. If it's a small one, there isn't really much to do. And, of course, if you experience enough of them, you can start to tell earthquakes apart. The idea of people fleeing into the street is morbidly hilarious; you're probably safer in the towers. I mean, it takes a lot more to knock one of those down than it would to dislodge a window to fall down and smash over the throngs. • • • Well-pointed, but in truth that's not how they taught us. That is, it wasn't the idea that you would survive if the house collapsed, but, rather, you didn't want to be under the dining table if the chandelier suddenly dropped, or the china cabinet fell over. And if I recall correctly, one of the more gruesome sites in the Northridge Quake of 1994 (6.7, though with 16.7m/s[sup]2[/sup]—1.7 G—ground acceleration) was an apartment complex that essentially broke into pieces and fell over. The people hiding under their beds never had a chance. And, of course, while it is statistically unlikely that you're going to be one of the people right along the structural fracture when a building starts to go, the ones who were, in Northridge, had no place to go if they were under their beds. They had to ride it down and hope, and then the rest of the building landed on them. But as I learned it, the doorway was a good place to hide from minor debris falling down. The fish tank, the bookshelf, the chandelier. Of course, that was the early 1980s, when St. Helens was popping off on a fairly regular basis. (A funny story about St. Helens, as there aren't many: When I was seven, my father and I capsized a sailboat because, as we came about on a tack, there was this huge cloud obscuring part of the sky; an ash cloud from the July 22, 1980 eruption. We stared in awe, forgetting what we were doing. And then the boat was up on its port edge, then the mast caught, and then we were in the water, dagger up. Scared the hell out of my dad because he couldn't see me at first, and I wasn't helpful at all because I was just there in the water, staring at the boat, all of seven years old and completely mystified by the one-two punch.)
The biggest horror of my life happened right after I played a gig in Santa Monica at a bar called the Hobbit . Straight out of the exorcist . It is still to hard to tell the story . It changed Me for ever more , The Hobbit burnt down after that and as far as I know it has never been reopened . I could be wrong as I have not been around there in several decades . It was one wild ass place . A lot like that movie with the vampires in the bar in Mexico . What was that movie called ? Kind of a b movie that had a part 2 . You know were everyone gets locked up and then the vampires feast on the patrons. Took me years to get over the event . Some day when the world is ready I might tell it , or not maybe not all things should be revealed . That event might be one of them . One thing I can tell you is in the apartments up stairs was were I first saw people shooting up heroine . I was asked to stay the night so I did with a good buzz on ( Beer not heroine) and when I went up stairs to crash they the people were huddled around a person with a spoon and when they saw Me they said you can't have any . I was like O.K. didn't want any . So Me mind was right for the horrors that ensued later in the night . Horror is all I can say . Thank god when morning came . The guy that let Me crash there said I couldn't crash there anymore cause he broke up with his girl friend that had the place . He walked away and she walked up to Me and said " You don't have to leave you can can stay if you like . I said thanks anyway , I got to be moving on now .
Thanks Spidey . You are the greatest my Man . That guys girl friend ? She saved Me so I guess both apply
This is true enough - although the proper response to the danger of falling stuff is for people in earthquake zones not to store any large, heavy objects above waist height, properly anchor things like bookshelves to the walls (that's what all those annoying brackets and straps that come with IKEA furniture that nobody ever bothers with are for), etc. Presumably we've all seen footage of high-shelved liquor stores in earthquakes before, and so should know better... And if you're talking about something so severe that you have to worry about actual structural pieces falling on you, then probably a door frame isn't going to be much help, and your only real hope is to get outside and away from buildings entirely. Not that you'll have time to do that. I dunno. Count me in the fatalist camp I guess. The reason I prefer earthquake country to hurricane country or winter storm country is exactly that earthquakes come from out of nowhere and are over before you can really respond. So there's not much point in worrying - you either get hurt or you don't, and the outcome is generally settled before you have a chance to meaningfully respond. Excepting reasonable precautions, of course (check on the codes, don't store heavy stuff up high, etc.). My real worries when it comes to big earthquakes are the potential aftermath - fires, lack of utilities, hospitals overwhelmed, authorities unable to respond to the fires or keep order, etc. But that stuff all goes under general disaster preparedness and response, rather than earthquake-specific measures. I worry way more about a big brush fire breaking out and closing off my neighborhood, than I worry about earthquakes.
A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On An interesting map from USGS: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On: Earthquakes in the last seven days.
In California we have earthquakes and fires, and I always thought that was better than living in tornado ally or along the coast where they have hurricanes every year. Then when I lived in Sacramento, I had to worry about the levy breaking and flooding the city. Here in Washington they have tsunami evacuation signs and there is a volcano fairly close by. In Tucson AZ, you just need to stay out of the heat and when it rains a lot you do get some flooding.
Growing up on the north coast, I felt many, many quakes over the years. The biggest was on Nov. 8, 1980 at 7.2. It was almost two thirty in the morning, and as a teenager, I slept like the dead. It still woke me up. We lived on a fairly busy street; the speed limit was only thirty five MPH, but it was wide and flat and straight, and sometimes late at night you'd hear a car go by going at least double the limit. My first thoughts on waking up were that a drunk driving way too fast had drifted off the road, and impacted the house. I heard my mom begin yelling to get in the doorway, and my sleep fogged mind finally made the connection. Also, it had gone on far too long to be caused by a car impacting the house. I got out of bed, and tried to make it to the doorway; but the floor was jumping around, and it was very difficult to walk. The noise you hear in big ones like that is godawful. Just as I made it to the doorway, it stopped. As it was two thirty in the morning, I did what any teenager would do - I immediately went back to bed, and was asleep again moments after my head hit the pillow.
Absolutely Cool The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology offered up a short video of the ripple effect from the Virginia quake. Each circle on the map marks a seismic monitor station; blue is up, red is down. Click the link. It's really cool. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!____________________ Notes: Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology. "USArray GMV for MW 5.8 Virginia". August 23, 2011. IRIS.edu. August 24, 2011. http://www.iris.edu/spud/gmv/109962
