We were in Torrance in the '70s. There was a 6+ quake that woke me. I thought my sister was rolling over jiggling our bunk beds. When I was fully awake I realized my upper bunk was empty--my sisters share the bunk beds on the other side of our room. Hopefully there's no damage to your home!!

Glad it wasn’t a strong one. I think the worst thing is when you first feel an earthquake and you tense, anticipating whether it’s going to intensify or continue longer or just stop. Or start again! Always a relief when they stop

I do not see any damage to my house, but I haven't checked the gate and cinderblock wall yet.

This was the largest quake I have felt since the July 4 & 5, 2019 quakes in Ridgecrest, which we felt very strongly in Cathedral City - mostly notably because lots of water sloshed out of the pool and covered the patio. Those earthquakes were larger but quite far away so that we did not get any real damage, although they did damage roads in the area.

It’s such a surreal feeling. Glad you’re ok and hope you don’t find any structural damage.

I was at the grocery store and didn’t feel anything.

Lars, I well remember the Ridgecrest quakes you mentioned. We were watching this Dodger game on one of the nights. You can see the camera jiggling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knp7xu2UM4c

Here's another video made during one of the Ridgecrest quakes:

Here's the video Kevin made after the same quake:

We lived through the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the Bay Area. My husband was under the bay on BART at the time, and I didn't know if he'd even survived for about four hours. It was a pretty traumatic event in our lives. I used to have to drive across the Nimitz, past the part which collapsed, to go visit my sister, and every time I came up to that point in the drive, I started to get panicky feelings. Hope everyone came through it okay.

There was an earthquake in Hawaii today as well.

Lars, I’ve seen the makeup video. I can laugh now but YIKES!!! I remember a quake in Baja on Easter Sunday some years ago...maybe 2009 or 2010? We were at my inlaw’s home in Bradbury and their pool looked just like yours. My first earthquake after moving here from Michigan was Sylmar in February 1971. A mega doozy for a first!

Bestyears, hard to forget the Nimitz freeway with the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. I can only imagine what that would have been like for you.

blfenton, I actually heard about the Hawaii quake today before they mentioned the one here. I was in the car on my way home.

II’m just glad that you’re okay, and hoping no one was badly hurt in the area!

Kevin was on the 3rd floor of his building at Sony in Culver City, and he told me that the shaking was strongly felt there, especially since the building is on rollers, which allow the building to move during earthquakes and absorb the energy. He felt aftershocks that I did not feel.

Im glad it wasnt any worse than it was.

My son was living in LA during the Northridge quake. His power was knocked out. He called at 7 a.m. east coast time to say there was an earthquake. The news of the quake just came on the television and I had to hold the phone up to the tv so he could hear what was going on. Luckily he was fine but his dishes were knocked out of the cabinets.

At the Northridge quake, my brother was living in Albany NY, and he called me - I was unable to make outgoing calls, and his call to me was the only one that got through. I had no power, no gas, and no water for three days, and I had everything in kitchen cabinets thrown out in one direction, SSE, but things that were in the opposite cabinets were sent further into those cabinets and did not end up on the floor. It made a huge mess on my kitchen floor, with glass, molasses, flour, etc all mixed together.

My picture window in the dining room also came into the apartment, creating even more broken glass, and so it was difficult to walk into the kitchen. I waited a few hours before I even began to try to clean anything. Fortunately, I was moving two weeks later and had already reserved a moving truck. Also, even though it was mid January, the temperatures were in the 80s, and so I did not experience any cold from having a huge broken window.

No damage here, but I was on the phone with a coworker. I felt it first, then he felt it. Now I know what that alert sound is on my phone!

The videos are scary! How weird is it that we had a very rare 4.0 quake right off the coast of Florida yesterday?

news

Glad you're OK, Lars. Hope your home is as well.

My sister in Santa Monica texted me a bit before 5 pm EST and said 4.7 - she said it's the strongest she's ever experienced.

I learned there was a 4.0 earthquake about 100 miles offshore from Cape Canaveral at 11 pm Wed. night and approx. 6 miles deep.

Is the earth trying to shake us off?

Know what old timers in California call a 4.6 quake? A foot massage.

Goodness, glad all seems ok Lars.

Or, heavy truck driving down the street.

Glad all is well with those of you affected. I didn’t feel it at all, but I’m quite a ways south.

I was living in a fourth floor apartment in Burbank during the Northridge quake. Luckily, I was away on a business trip because the contents of my apartment were in a heap of glass, books and china shards. A large armoire where I stored my crystal and china fell over onto the glass-topped dining table. I never really stayed there again because the water and power were unreliable for months. I couch-surfed with friends until I moved cross-country for a new job. A friend helped me clean up the debris with shovels until I could get it to a condition that movers could come in and pack and move me.

I’m glad to know it wasn’t a big quake. Hope you and everyone over there stay safe, and hope all will be well for the Lunar new year celebration tomorrow.

I will say that the parakeet wasn't happy and blames me.

I can relate, earthquakes are no joke ,

I had parakeets when I lived in Venice, and they would go suddenly silent whenever there was the slightest earthquake. There was never anything major for the 15 years that I lived there.

I have noticed that a lot of earthquakes in L.A. happen within a day or two of the new moon, and I've been in a lot of quakes in Mexico that happened during full moons. In 1979, I was in a 7.2 in Mexico City during a lunar eclipse, and I had experienced earthquakes on the previous two full moons, getting larger each time. For a while, it made me fearful of full moons, and I had nightmares about earthquakes during full moons, but these dreams also had flying saucers landing just before the earthquakes with aliens coming out and greeting me.

I've noticed the earthquakes in Oklahoma, but I don't think they will ever get larger than 5.0, which is scary enough. I've also noticed that Texas is getting quakes now, especially near Midland/Odessa, in the Permian Basin, which surrounds the SE corner of New Mexico.

Glad you guys are okay.

Having been in a 7.2 quake in northern Cali,near Eureka, in 1980, and an 8.0 on Adak, AK in 1986, plus many smaller earthquakes in Iceland, Hawaii, and Adak (on Adak, 3-4 were almost weekly occurrences and a 5 or better every month or two), as weird as it sounds you kinda get used to them after awhile and barely notice unless it's out of the ordinary (like an 8 for example).

Especially on Adak you could tell who was new to the island by watching their response to a minor tremor.

Did any of you receive notice on your phones in the seconds before the quake?

sjerin, I was at the grocery store and didn’t notice.

I remember being a kid here in SoCal and hearing about the Anchorage quake in 1964…9.2 magnitude!

Something that many people don't realize is that the richter scale of ranking the strength of an earthquake is logarithmic and not linear. In other words a 5 is 10 times stronger than a 4, for example.

On that scale a 6 would be 100 times stronger than a 4 while a 7 is 1000 times stronger.

The 9.2 in 1964 was more than 100,000 times stronger than a 4.

For anyone who has experienced a category 4 earthquake, think about that for a moment.

I have an earthquake app on my phone, but it did not warn me or even tell me about the quake for a couple of hours. When I tried to open the app, it told me that I had to download an update, or else it would not work, and the downloads for updates are not automatic. I am thinking that I will remove this app from my phone, as it is more annoying than it is helpful.

As for earthquake intensity (on the richter scale), the shaking intensity for a 6.7 is about as strong as shaking will get, and the higher numbers on the scale are achieved primarily because of the length of time that the shaking lasts, as the scale of the earthquake intensity is based on the total amount of shaking - not just the strength of the shaking, although that is part of it. My friends in Mexico City told me that the 8.5 quake felt like a 7.2 quake, except that it lasted much longer.

Elmer, you are spot on with the truck analogy. In the mid-1960s I was a kid in a class on the wecond floor of a building in the north suburbs of Chicago. A truck rumbled by in the alley, an especially loud one such that we all noticed (as opposed to the normal rumblings that we ignored). Much later it was revealed that it was, in fact, an earthquake. very, very, very small, but still. We are nowhere near the New Madrid Fault, but we do get the very occasional tremor, like every decade or less.

Oakley, I never thought about how even a mild one can damage window frames or seals in such a way you might not notice!

This is meme/mantra is popular in the midwest when we are digging out from a foot of snow:

(Where I live, tornados are rare, too.)

Over the past few years there have been a number of quakes off the coast of Malibu and Santa Monica. All have been on the small side causing little to no damage.

I’m more concerned with the Inglewood fault — as in the Newport-Inglewood fault — which runs through West Los Angeles, and caused the disastrous Long Beach earthquake in the early 1930s. (That’s why our building codes now require reinforced masonry.)

I've never heard of windows loosened and becoming drafty because of an earthquake. I guess anything is possible but this is a new one.

“In other words a 5 is 10 times stronger than a 4, for example.”

Right, the difference can be severe. What surprised me were the two Ridgecrest quakes Lars mentioned. I felt the first one (6.4 on 7/4/19) much more than the second (7.1 on 7/6/19).

It's a poor day in which one doesn't learn sumthin, Elmer.

ole joyful

I was in Manhattan, in a 3rd floor apt. in the late 80s when there was an earthquake. We thought it was the subway, and only found out later what it actually was.

The first time I visited my sister in Santa Monica, there was a smallish quake. She gets very upset by them. We both grew up here in FL, so not much experience with things like that.

And FWIW, I've felt the earth move, and doors and windows rattled here in our house (slab on grade) when heavy machinery goes by, or work's being done on the street out front.

I grew up about 32 miles east of Fort Hood (now called Fort Cavazos), and the windows of the house would rattle when jets would break the sound barrier and cause sonic booms. I don't know if they still test jets there, but sonic booms were common in the 1950s and 60s, as I remember.

I remember that too, Lars. There's a military base in Tampa.

Jets from Edwards AFB regularly rattled the LA Basin during those years too.

Sonic booms were the sound track of my childhood, and the windows rattling from the engines being tested by Rocketdyne on the other side of the San Fernando Valley.

A frequent comment by my mother: ”Is it a quake, or Rocketdyne?”

Carol, I was living in Queens when we had that NY earthquake in 85 or 86 maybe? It woke us all out of bed trying to figure out what it was. It knocked items off the wall unit. One vase hit the back of the TV on the way down and fixed the TV. I’ll never forget that, it was so random. Earthquakes are not usually on your mind in NY.

Here's a video of the quake that someone posted on Twitter.

I'm not sure who was taking this video or why, but it seems to have randomly caught the shaking. You can see things fall off of one of the shelves, but at least they did not go flying across the room.

Lars...I'm glad your OK.