My 2nd earthquake!

So on Thursday night last week I experienced my 2nd ever earthquake! It was pretty awesome. Only a 4.2, but it was just across the bay in the Oakland Hills and so I felt it, baby! It was like 4 in the morning, and I just randomly woke up, and immediately felt this crescendo of deep bass rumblings…

rumblerumblerumblerumbleRUMBLERUMBLERUMBLErumblerumble… the whole building shook and things were rattling, but it was sort of a happy pleasant sort of shake and rattle. Apparently it lasted 10-30 seconds (depending on where you were)… I’m guessing that the low bass of the early part of the crescendo is what woke me up, giving me another 5-10s to enjoy the experience.

Anyways, Leah came running out of her room and yelled through my door, “omg, what was that!!” And I was like, um, hello native Bay Area girl, that was an earthquake. Hahaha. Ah well, she was out of it… it was 4 in the morning and the thing did wake us up.

I have to admit that as it rumbled away for the few seconds it lasted, I was half-expecting the crescendo to continue… I can see how it could have increased to a really destructive level, which would have been kind of cool to witness (assuming I survived). Some day that’ll happen, and I’ll likely still be living here. But it’s nice to know that I’m not really freaked out by earthquakes, and apparently won’t be until the Big One’s actually attempting to kill me.

Why I don't live in the Marina!

So back in October when Leah and I were looking at places to live in the city, I steadfastly refused to live in the Marina. I wasn't interested in risking liquefaction during an earthquake and being swallowed whole by the earth beneath, as actually happened in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Of course, Leah totally made fun of me, saying that only non-Californians think about that sort of thing, and that it'd be like her being afraid of tornados if she moved to Illinois. Of course, there are never tornados in Chicago, so it's something you can avoid by living there. But whatever. =P

Anyways.... I've been watching this documentary on the Loma Prieta earthquake that hit NorCal in 1989, and it's been really fascinating. One of the things I knew is that the Marina district was created by landfill. But why? Well, in 1915, San Francisco wanted to change the world's opinion of SF from victim-of-massive-earthquake to, well, anything else. So the city hosted the Panama Pacific International Exposition, a major world event that required massive construction of both temporary and permanent buildings. Actually, one of the goals was to make SF a major Pacific port, and for whatever reason, to do this they needed to fill in the marshy Marina. So they did... and they filled it in with... wait for it... debris from the 1906 earthquake.

OMG, the irony. So 83 years later, when an earthquake hits 70 miles south of SF, the Marina is one of the hardest hit in the entire Bay Area, because it was built on landfill... landfill created from the remains of the last major earthquake to hit SF. Insanity!!!

So yeah... instead I now live in South Beach, which is also landfill. =P But we're in a high-rise which was built in 2005 or so, and it's allegedly been pile-driven down into the bedrock. So as long as I'm in my apt when the big one hits, I should be ok. =D