Will I live all my life in an earthquake zone?

[kodalai]

So, yesterday we had a pretty big earthquake here. Actually, it was over in Ishikawa, but I felt it from where I was -- it was strong enough to wake me up (9:45 on a Sunday morning, of course I was asleep) and knocked over a bunch of stuff in my apartment. My thoughts? "Am I gonna die? More importantly, am I going to have to get out of bed? God dammit."

Another smaller quake hit last night, another this morning, and wow, one just now as I was typing this sentence. I'm guessing these little ones are aftershocks of the big ones -- at least, nothing else has fallen over. Although altogether this is one of those experiences that causes you to pause and take a moment to wonder what made humanity think that colonizing the edge of a fault zone was a good idea anyway.

I'd experienced one earthquake before, within a few days of arriving in California. That one also woke me up, in the middle of the night. I suppose there were a few other quakes while I was there, but I never felt them. Considering my plans to go back to California after JET, it makes me wonder if I'm gonna live the rest of my life in an earthquake zone (after having grown up on basement rock,) and whether or not that's a bad thing.

Comments

[meritjubet.livejournal.com]

That sounds scary. But I guess you have some knowledge about them. I live in Australia, which practically has no movement, so very alien to me.

Though, I don't think it's necessarily bad to live in an area prone to it, just have to take precautions I guess.

Glad you're safe! :)

[zalia.livejournal.com]

Am I gonna die? More importantly, am I going to have to get out of bed? God dammit.

Sounds remarkably like what I thought when there was an eathquake over here ^^; I woke up, thought someone had dropped a bomb on us or something and then decided that if they had, it wouldn't make any difference if I was awake, so I went back to sleep ^^;

I'm glad you're okay!

[sunhawk16.livejournal.com]

Glad you're ok. O.O Though the 'get out of bed' remark made me laugh in the face of your danger. ^^;

[foxglove6.livejournal.com]

eep! that's scary! i have a similar reaction when we get tornado warnings here. i didn't grow up with them so they scare me little more than most people in this area.
i'm glad you're ok. be safe, get more sleep ;-)

[aging-parents.livejournal.com]

Like foxglove6, we moved into an area where dangerous tornadoes are much more probable than back in the Philly area (which actually averaged about one tornado a year -- I even had a student one year who had his roof ripped off by a tornado one night -- but there really isn't room between the Appalachians and the Atlantic for tornadoes to get to the really scary force levels). But when I looked at the statistics, I discovered that in the last generation or two, the death rate is less than 1 in 2,000,000 per year in the state; since I don't worry excessively about dying in a traffic accident (which is at least hundreds of times more probable), I can probably get by with just keeping a tv or radio on during thunderstorms!

For most of the last couple of generations, a lot of Americans have clung to the belief that much of California is in imminent danger of breaking off into the sea -- I think the idea is that any place that has such great scenery and nice weather OUGHT to have to pay for it eventually. Not going to happen. First World societies (like Japan, California and even Texas, for the most part) do not suffer megacasualties from natural disasters, it seems -- that is the fate only of poor countries in the modern world.

[okaasan59.livejournal.com]

Now see, last time Japan had an earthquake we were all worried about you and you were like, "Um, what?" So this time when I heard about the quake I thought, "oh, it's probably not anywhere near her." O_O

Glad it was only a little shake for you.

[aging-parents.livejournal.com]

Of course, given foxglove's proximity to the New Madrid, Missouri, Seismic Zone, perhaps she should be more worried about earthquakes than tornadoes, anyway!