How Northern California OGs Handle Earthquakes
My niece recently moved back to California with Sam, her Texas-born boyfriend. They were in Santa Rosa in September when the 4.4 magnitude earthquake hit. The epicenter was only a few miles away. They got a good jolt, though thankfully their home didn’t sustain any damage other than a few pictures falling off the wall. This was Sam’s first earthquake and he was mildly shaken up.
“You’ve been Christened,” I told him recently. I patted him on the back and said “Welcome to Northern California, my man. You’ll get used to it.”
He’s now been through one, so he’ll be more prepared the next time. This got me thinking about the things I’ve learned from living on top of the San Andreas fault for most of my life. I’ve been through a lot of earthquakes. Over time I’ve developed systems and thought patterns that’ve helped me through the inevitable shakes in this part of the Country.
We had a minor earthquake on the Peninsula in the middle of the night a few months ago. When I was jolted awake, I didn’t jump to conclusions. It was 3:14 AM. I realized that there must be a group of men moving a washing machine into our dining room. They must have accidentally dropped it. No big deal. But experience quickly made me realize this was unlikely. It must have been that our dog had shifted positions on our bed. But the walls were moving and our dog weighs seventeen pounds.
I quickly gathered myself and focused my thoughts on what was most important. This might be the Big One. I’ve been expecting this for a very long time. It dawned on me that this might be the moment of my death. I focused my thoughts further on the idea that this was very trippy. It’s strange to wait for something deadly to hit you your entire life and then have it go down at 3 AM when you’re half awake, lying in bed. But isn’t that typical? 3 AM is a pretty good time for that kind of thing.
I was determined not to go down without a fight. With all the strength I could muster I put one foot over the other, then one hand over the other, until I’d fallen out of bed. I crawled to the far end of the bedroom in search of something to get under. But there wasn’t anything over there.
My wife had just woken up and called my name. I let her know in an energetic fashion that this was an earthquake. I told her to get under something, though I wasn’t under anything.
The shaking stopped, but I knew there could be aftershocks. I yelled at my wife to “Freeze!” She said “What…?” Unbelievable. She was still only half awake. I wasn’t surprised, since she’d grown up in Boston.
A few minutes went by. “That was an earthquake,” I declared with equanimity, though my heart was still racing. I made a mental note to check my Oura ring later. My wife didn’t respond. Wow, she had already fallen back to sleep. She obviously didn’t know that the next step is always to compare notes no matter what time it is. In these situations I’ve found it helpful to ask each other what you were thinking when you realized it was an earthquake. It helps build the knowledge base for the next inevitable event
So instead I got onto Twitter. I’ve been through this before. I searched the #earthquake hashtag. As quickly as I could I tweeted out “Yep, that was a pretty good one in San Mateo.”
Then as I tried to go back to sleep, I once again reviewed what had happened so that I’d be even more prepared next time. I also hadn’t forgotten that after shocks could be big. I either read somewhere or someone once told me that aftershocks can occassionally be bigger than the initial jolt. That stuck with me.
But after several minutes of self-calming, I was fairly certain this wasn’t going to be the Big One. At some future date I might not be as lucky. Instead of lying in bed I’ll be wedged under six tons of crumpled beams, my only water source a ruptured gas line, dripping fuel onto my already blood-soaked pajamas. But at least I’ll be prepared.
