Yeah, I just got off the phone with my ex-H. He's in Hemet. I told him to be sure to put the rails up on the bed tonight...you're gonna have some aftershocks!

As a native CA, I so know that sick to your stomach feeling. lol Glad your OK, Gina.

/tricia

No kidding!! It was a 5.8 centered inland at Chino Hills. I'm sitting at my desk in my second story home office and was waiting for all the books to fall on me! But it was a sharp jolt and then a long rolling motion. It lasted quite a while.
Thankfully all is okay here and seems to be okay around LA according to the news.

Pffft. Felt it here too (while canning dilly green beans as a teacher gift, no less). We are 50 miles away. Didn't seem to last long for me, Ellen, I think you are closer to Chino Hills? Apparently we felt it as a 3.6 or something based on the Earthquake website I logged onto.

Yeah we have useless earthquake in$$$urance.

I didnt feel it here in Kernville but DH felt it in Bakersfield and DD said it was a sharp jolt in Valencia. We have the useless earthquake insurance also. Hope I never have to know just how useless it really is.

Claudia

Yikes! Glad to hear you are all okay.

You all had better stock up on canned cucumbers just in case...

Nope Jessy, you're closer! Apparently it knocked out phone service in Laguna Hills. If you look at the map it's further south than by us.

Where's Lars?

Oh geez, I'd better call Elery, his son and DIL live near Laguna Hills....

I'm glad everyone here is safe, without even any motion sickness meds or canned cucumbers!

Annie

Stay safe, everyone!

I used to live in Laguna Hills just off Alicia Parkway (Costeau Dr.) & still have friends there. I can't reach them by phone as of 4:15 EDT. My friend's husband works at San Onofre. I'm assuming everything's OK there...it's a long ways from the eipicenter.

/tricia

Glad y'all are ok! The news showed watermain break too. Here's the epicenter, etc. information.

Hope I don't have any broken glasses when I get home. Different areas feel it differently depending on what's under you. If you're on clay, on granite, on sand, etc.

I'm glad you're all OK as well... at least the ones of you who have checked in hitherto.

Scary. Glad everyone is okay.

Ann

Glad everyone is okay. I better call my family that lives in Canoga Park.

Barnmom,Annie:

I refuse to put canned cucumbers in my emergency supply. Maybe another bottle of Chivas wouldnt hurt but no canned cucumbers.

Claudia

Glad to know everyone is OK out there.

I didn't feel it at all here :)) But maybe I should get some canned cucumber's for the pantry...just in case.

Nancy

Y'all are bad. My crystal ball tells me someone somewhere may be getting a can of cucs in a swap package someday.... darfc...

So....what'll you ahve for a salad without any canned cukes?
Glad the quake seems to be uneventful, but for a little nausea!
Linda C

The great thing about canned cucumber as an emergency food is that it will still be there when you need it worst, when everything else has been eaten. And you won't have to shoot anyone to keep them from stealing it.

Jim

Glad to see everyone checking in. I guess Lars, Scott, Diana, Finally, and whoever I'm forgetting is okay too. I was glad to see on the news that there wasn't any major damage.

David

Jimster

You are absolutely correct. Nobody would steal canned cucumbers. You probably couldnt even trade it for anything. I doubt the raccoons would even eat it. Just sounds nasty. Besides I might need the raccoons for dinner. Now the bottle of Chivas would be another thing. I do have canned butter and cheese in my emergency supply cabinet. I opened one can of butter when I first got them and it was OK, unsalted, but doable.

Claudia

Just a reminder to anyone calling family and friends in the quake area and not getting through: the telephone lines are jammed with similar calls (everyone checking on everyone else). In fact, on the network news tonight, they said that authorities were worried that people who provide (or need) emergency help could not communicate because of the overload on the system.

When a strong quake struck Seattle a few years ago, I was in a panic because I couldn't get through to DD, who lives there. But a friend from LA, a veteran of the Northridge quake, reassured me that the lines were probably not down, just jammed to the limit, and that turned out to be the case.

Hope all our friends in the LA area are OK.

Sue

My mom just called..."you weren't worried about me?!"...
nah...I figured when it was safe you'd call. LOL...
she works on the 10th floor of the CNN building..she said it freaked her out a bit more than she thought it should..
She said the building was really swaying..I said..yeah they're built to do that! Nothing at her apartment was upset when she got to it..so she's fine..a little 'rattled'..snork...
She works for Children's Hospital in LA..they got a message saying that only emergency calls for an hour or so were to come in and out on the hospital phone lines, because some of the lines were knocked out. So the resources were limited.
I told her the 10th floor is nothin...And reminded her that I used to work in the Fifth Avenue Plaza in Seattle. The wind blows and the building sways from the 20th floor up! (It's 46 floors.) oh and it's Western Washington, so the wind ALWAYS blows!
Okay, but she was still mad at me for not checking in...bad daughter...bad...bad...girl...

My understanding is that the phone systems have a mode they go into for emergencies that blocks calls into the area to leave lines available for calls going out and calls inside the area.

So far the news indicates that the effects were pretty minor. 5.4 isn't that big a quake (at least for California construction which is generally built for quakes).

As far as emergency food supplies, you might think that it should be something you won't be tempted to eat unless you have to but the opposite is true. It is important for them to be something reasonably appetizing to you. Lots of problems - hypothermia, depression, etc. - have loss of appetite as a side effect. In an emergency when you need to eat but possibly aren't very interested in eating, you need something that will be easier to choke down - something you would like when it isn't an emergency. Also, emergency foods need to be replaced before they get too old, another good reason to have something that you would be willing to eat when its not an emergency.

I just saw it on the news...checking in to see if anyone was affected.

I hope all of you that haven't checked in are safe.

5.4 isn't big, relatively, but it was shallow enough to make quite a stir. We were feeling it for about 30 seconds at least, as the building swayed and swayed to and fro. (I'm on the first floor). Friends who were driving at the time didn't feel it. At least it wasn't at dawn like so many of them are - those that wake you up, heart pounding in your chest.

Yeah, that one was definitely felt. Wasn't sure whether to enjoy it or run under my desk. It's been a while since we had one that big. No damage, whew!

Whew, I'm glad there doesn't appear to be any serious damage from yesterday's quake.

Being a CA native, I've experienced hundreds of quakes but the largest was the 1971 Sylmar jolt. Right after it happened, the USGS said it was 6.8 but it was later revised down to 6.6. Still, it was fierce!

I was 20 years old, newly married, & living on the second floor of an older apartment building in Tustin near the Santa Ana line. My memories are that the quake hit at 6:05 a.m.; but Wiki says it was 6:00:55 a.m. I was standing at the bathroom sink brushing my teeth getting ready to head off to work. My husband was at the other end of the apartment. At first, neither of us much reacted but as the quake built in intensity he yelled at me to get out of the building. By that time, everything in the apartment was toppled over, the kitchen looked like a war zone, & our bed had flung itself through the sliding glass doors leading to our miniscule balcony. We ran outside barefoot & still in our nightclothes. The shaking lasted one full minute...a very long time. We got outside & there were lots of other people all of us scared. A hole opened up in the road about 3' long & a few inches wide lifting the pavement. Stucco was flying off the apartment building into the street. We decided we were better off back inside. It all happened so quickly it's like a blur in my memories.

Anyway, all TV & radio stations were knocked off the air so there was no communication in the first few minutes. Within 30 minutes the stations were back on the air with emergency power. Still though, nobody knew where the epicenter was or how bad the quake had been. Shortly after the quake there was an aftershock that was almost as large as the initial quake but it didn't last as long.

Communications just weren't as good in '71 as they are now. I called my Dad at his office knowing he would have been on the road at the time of the quake. Mom had been killed 5 months earlier & Dad was still reeling from that so I knew the quake would have really jarred him. He'd been on the 605 freeway at the Cerritos exit when the quake hit. It moved his car to the right 3 lanes of traffic. Dad said he thought he'd had a heart attack. It took him a couple minutes to realize what had happened. Back then, the 605 was not heavily traveled & there weren't a lot of other cars around so no accidents.

Both my husband & I went to work as normal because we didn't know what else to do? I was working for Allergan Pharmaceuticals & our offices were still in the old facility in Tustin. The Irvine tower was nearing completion & we were scheduled to move into the new facility within a month. I got to work & couldn't get inside...too much damage to the building. We all just hung around outside talking for hours. Most of us had sustained damage at home & didn't want to return there & it felt safer in a group. We still didn't know how bad it had been. There just wasn't the news helicopters & stuff then as now.

By mid-morning, we knew it was bad. The VA hospital collapsed & lots of freeway overpasses were down. I remember the worry that the dam was going to break & flood thousands.

I eventually went back home but by then the fire department was at our building & wouldn't let anybody inside. So, I went to where my husband worked. They were all gathered outside in the parking lot. He worked for Varian (an electronic company) & there were tons of overhead wires in the building that had come down so they couldn't get inside their facility either. We just hung out there in the parking lot for a couple hours huddled around our car radios.

Dad's house had some damage but it was superficial so we went to his place to stay the night. Dad's secretary lived in Huntington Beach. Her place was damaged to the point she was afraid to stay overnight in the house (she was a widow) so she was also at Dad's.

We had to find a new apartment. Ours was too damaged to live in for months. We were so lucky though. Had that quake hit an hour later the roads would have been packed with commuters on their way to work. The death toll would have been much greater.

The movie 'Earthquake' came out about a year later (not sure of exactly when?). It was about the quake. We went to see it at the Pantages Theater. They had placed vibrators under all of the seats & at the moment the quake hit in the movie they turned on the vibrators! Everybody in the theater screamed!! It was just like going through the quake again...I've not liked disaster movies since.

Once you've been through a big quake like this one or that horrible Loma Prieta quake you just never forget it. And your senses get very fine tuned. Years later, I was living in southern NH. I woke up early in the morning & shook my now DH awake saying, "Wake UP! We've just had an earthquake!" He told me I was dreaming...go back to sleep. Well, the next morning, sure enough...we heard on the morning news there'd been a quake at the Canadian border. DH has never experienced a quake so I guess that's why he didn't sense it like I did?

Everything is so much better today. Better building codes, communications, news availability, emergency services, etc. If you drive from LA & head over the Grapevine you can still see the fault breaks from the '71 quake. I was last over the Grapevine Jan. '06 & pointed them out to DH.

I am very glad everybody's OK & that damage is minimal.

/tricia

I was in college in Northern California during the 71 quake, but my family lived in the San Fernando Valley. IIRC, that one did damage out of proportion to its size - there was something about the type of shaking - strong quakes weren't suppose to have that direction of shake so it badly damaged some buildings and a bunch of freeway overpasses that were suppose to have been built to withstand earthquakes. Building standards had to be modified. It also damaged some dams so large areas of the SF Valley had evacuation orders in case a dam gave way before it was repaired.

Wow, Tricia, what a story. I'm glad everyone who's checked in is ok! Waiting to hear from the rest!!

I got to help supervise the evacuation of the elementary school where I work (downtown L.A.). It went well.

A lot of parents came and took their children home, but most kids stayed and eventually returned to the classrooms.

It felt strong but was brief, no damage to the school and good practice in case anything worse happens.

I'm not bothered by quakes -- I grew up in Riverside where there are frequent small ones. Tornadoes are another story; that would scare the heck out of me!

I was at work for this one, and it was the first one I had felt in that building, which was a bit noisy. We felt the shaking for about 15 to 20 seconds, which is pretty long, but DB felt it even more because is on ball bearings, allowing it to roll around during quakes. It's actually safer, but the shaking gets somewhat intensified.

I got worried that it was going to be a precursor to a larger quake, and it probably means that we will at least be getting more small quakes in the near future. We've gone through a 10 year spell of quiet, and that appears to be over now.

Lars

Tricias description of the Sylmar quake brings back memories. My dads plumbing company was working on the new addition at the Sylmar hospital. After turning off the main supply for the gas, water, and oxygen he spent most of the day helping move get patients out of the damaged buildings. He said in some places the rooms were split in half and the floors had heaved up over 4 feet. I remember him saying he was so worried about the gas and oxygen pipes he sent some of his men to surrounding buildings to turn off all the mains in the area. I was living in No. Hollywood and we lost a lot of glass but no structural damage to the house. Almost 3 feet of water splashed out of the pool. My DD was terrified after being thrown out of bed and still is terrified of earth quakes.

Dad is now 87 and called yesterday asking if I knew how to shut off the main water and propane supply to the house. I just laughed and said of course I do you had me setting toilets by the time I was 10 so I think I can handle a shut off valve.

Claudia

I talked to my neighbors today about their experience during the quake (since I was not at home, but they were), and Will told me that he ran out into the patio, where he could see waves rippling through the ground, as if the ground had turned to water. I've never gone outside during a quake (or been outside), and so I've not seen that, although I've heard about it. I saw plumes of dust in '94, however. The biggest quake I've been in was March 14, 1979 in Mexico City. It was 7.6 but was centered in the state of Guerrero, south of Mexico City, but close enough to be stronger than what I felt in 1994 when I lived in Culver City. After the 79 quake I started having earthquake dreams, and in 1992 I had a dream about the Northridge quake, which I recorded in my diary. In my diary, I wrote that I experienced a quake in what I thought was Los Angeles or Japan, or Japantown in L.A., and it was December or January 1994. When I lived in San Francisco (which is where I lived until Nov 1984), I had recorded many dreams about quakes along with predictions of when I expected them to happen. At that time, I could only predict the dates and not the locations. At this stage of my life, I am no longer worried by quakes, but they used to be a preoccupation for me.

I've never had a shortage of food after a quake, and in '94 I gave a lot of food away because I had too much.

Lars