Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Earthquake 101


Sometimes the job of the new kid in town is not to learn but to teach.  At 1:51 pm this afternoon, the building began a gentle, rolling motion.  It took a full 3 minutes for the co-workers to figure out what was happening.

‘Is the building shaking”?’

1      Yes, that was an earthquake.

‘I’m calling the building to find out why the building’s shaking.’

2      It’s shaking because we’re having an earthquake.  Also, during a quake, everyone calls everyone they know-  tying up the phone lines and overwhelming the system.  (New York’s 911 system had 22,000 calls by 3:00 today-  more than twice the average by that time).  Wait to call, and the phone lines will clear up.  Oh, and one last thing, if you happen to pass a pay-phone on the street with the receiver off the hook, hang it up-  this will help speed up the return of phone service  (that last bit is from the obsolete manual). 

‘You may not be able to use the phone.  We tried and couldn’t.’

3      Already addressed.  The building’s phone system was overwhelmed by people calling to find out why the building was shaking.  (Because we’re having an earthquake).  I turned to another trusted news source:  Facebook.

‘Earthquake?!?’

4      Already addressed.

’good recon, people.  no doubt you wrote from your strongest doorways’.

5      Don’t stand under the door for protection.  Swinging doorways can hit and injure you during a quake.

‘They’re saying it was 5.9.’

6      A moderate quake.  The Richter scale is exponential.  So a 6.0 is ten times as powerful as a 5.0.  (I was actually surprised that the lawyers didn’t know this.  They went to Harvard.  Both of them.  I went to California.  They learned about the law.  I learned about the SeismoCam.)

‘PLEASE tell me we just had a small earthquake and that it wasn’t just my apartment.’

7      No, actually, we just had a moderate earthquake, and it was well far away from your apartment.  Sharp, hard shake equals small quake, right under your feet.  Gentle, rolling motion equals bigger quake, far away.  So from the gentle, rolling motion, I could immediately tell that not only were we having an earthquake, we were having a fairly good-sized earthquake where the epicenter was pretty far away.  (Virginia, as it happens.)  About five years into living in L.A., I realized I could estimate earthquake scale and distance.  It just happens.  That, the ability to whip up a mean batch of guacamole and an inescapable need to shop at Trader Joes.

‘I heard they could feel it in North Carolina.’

8      East coast quakes can be felt from further away than west coast quakes.  West coast rocks are brittle, rigid, stopping the waves of the quake in a relatively short distance, while East Coast rocks are more malleable-  flexible.  Which means that earthquakes can be felt for hundreds of miles from their east Coast epicenters, (kind of like a.m. radio signals, where you can pick up WGN in Flagstaff).  Ok, maybe we’re in Earthquake 201 territory now-  what can I say?  I went to California (via Flagstaff).  Geology became interesting.  Actually, that’s not true-  New York City geology was always much more interesting than Los Angeles geology.  But that’s an entirely different lecture, and it involves a walking tour of lower Manhattan.  

So, my east-coast grasshoppers, welcome to your first earthquake.  And probably your last earthquake.  I know I had thought I’d left earthquakes behind me.  I never found them to be terrifying-  just inconvenient.  I don’t miss the having to secure the bookshelves and stock up on water.  But I do miss the SeismoCam.  And especially, the SeismoCam instant replay.