Rare NY earthquake, 4.8

chloebud

2 years ago

I’ve lived in CA since 1962 and never got used to them. Most people here would shrug at a 4.8 but they all scare me. I think our last stronger ones were in 2019 just a day apart…6.4 and 7.1.

Shrugger here. I don't even remember the Ridgecrest quake Chloebud mentioned, other than the whole talk regarding foreshocks (the 6.4 was a foreshock and the main quake was the following day, which freaked some people out, though it's a standard pattern). What you describe is normal for a quake of that magnitude, not centered right near by. Quakefeed (an awesome app) shows the epicenter in New Jersey, but shallow, which one feels more strongly. So, aftershocks will come, but you might not feel them, or this could be a foreshock to something stronger, but probably not massive. Earthquakes are so much better than destructive weather! It lasts seconds, you're dead or you're not, and you get on with it. :D I don't know if this works in tall buildings, but if it's a roller rather than a jolter, you can watch the sine waves moving across the floor.

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Tina, I have no idea where you live, obviously you don't live in tornado alley, because if you did, watching TV is a MUST during tornado season. As other's have said before me, you do go out of your way informing us you don't watch TV. We get it, okay? These storms were predicted last week. Every.single.day the weathermen would tell us to be prepared on Monday and Tuesday. A siren doesn't help all that much either. They go off right before a tornado hits, which can be too late to seek shelter. I just wish more people installed storm cellars when they build a home. I wish the government could give grants to people who can't afford one. But if you ever move here and had no idea a mile wide tornado was coming your way, you WILL get some really funny looks. :) They even closed schools and postponed H.S. graduations a few HOURS before the storms came. Because we're weather aware. The people who died didn't have cellars.

Buying a Home in CA - San Francisco/East Bay

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I moved here from Chicago (and have also lived in LA) and you really, really should rent first. Housing prices are not going to zoom up anytime soon. The banks have a large shadow inventory and CA is one of the three worst states for foreclosures. It is very time-consuming to buy a foreclosure. Figure it will take 4x longer than to buy normally. Homes in foreclosure are often in bad shape; quality of construction in CA is often very low. Labor costs are high and skillful workers harder to find than they should be. Do not assume you can remodel a not-so-perfect house into what you want. The NIMBY-ism here is hideous and in all the major cities it is extraordinarily difficult and expensive to enlarge a home's footprint. You are legally constrained from covering more than 40% of your lot anyway, I believe, and with our small lots that's not a big footprint. Permits are expensive to obtain and if you make structural changes, it will be required that you bring everything up to current building code. Since every year brings in stricter earthquake building codes, this can add so much to the cost that remodeling projects become impossible. For example, our neighbor wanted to turn their downstairs into a legal in-law: adding a second bathroom, building a single-story, one-room addition. They had $75K in cash as their budget (we live in the Oakland foothills, nice older area, starter homes). It took them over $12K and almost two years to go through the permit process. Eventually they were told they had to apply for a waiver because they were taking 2' from the single-car garage which was already minimum size allowed, so they had to have the architect re-draw the plans and resubmit them. Permit cost, BTW, is 10% of the cost estimate in our city. The City of Oakland does the engineering study for all projects. As we live on a hill (great east-facing hillside views), they were told to stabilize their lot, it would be necessary to sink 40 piers, each 37' deep to bedrock, filled with steel rebar and concrete. 25 of the piers would be for the single-room addition (which was only going to be about 17x25') and the remaining 15 would be placed all along the north side of the existing house. The cost for the pier work alone? $65,000. Needless to say, they did something else with their remaining $63K. You might be surprised what you pay for utilities here. PG&E is one of the most expensive utilities in the country, and most older homes aren't insulated well. Our home is insulated with double-pane windows, we live in a warmer microclimate than Berkeley, I keep my home fairly cool, yet we pay on average $170/mo for gas (furnace/dryer/stove) and electricity. No one can place any dependency on PG&E absorbing all the costs for their unmapped leaking gas mains (a neighborhood in San Bruno saw its gas main blow up and 8 people died); we ratepayers will almost certainly see our rates rise yet again. Water isn't that expensive, but earthquake-proofing our EBMUD water reservoirs is. Our bi-monthly water bill for a large garden (1/6 acre) and 3 people runs $45 for water and $100 for earthquake work. We do have earthquake insurance. There is a fault that runs right through Alameda County and it's overdue for another major quake. Homeowners insurance is fairly low - less than $1K, and umbrella liability is around $200/yr. Earthquake insurance with a $100K deductible costs us almost $4000/yr. However, we have no mortgage so we are carrying all the risk on our home. It made sense for us to purchase risk mitigation. To be afraid of all of Oakland is ridiculous. There are some very good neighborhoods here, just as there are some bad neighborhoods in Berkeley. If I were buying for the first time, I'd look in El Cerrito on the east side of San Pablo Ave. Good, stable neighborhoods, nice weather, easier city traffic, great services/shops. I like Alameda, but access is limited to the bridges, and traffic is easily snarled at commute times. Traffic is the huge issue in the Bay Area. If you are still working, you need to really see how the traffic patterns work, not just when things go right but when things go wrong. Public transit is pathetic compared to Chicago, NY and Boston. Cars are a necessity in the East Bay; you can get around without one but it will take forever and making transfers between systems is a pain. Don't ignore the sales tax. The first time you pay sales tax on a new car, you will definitely feel the pain! Food is a conundrum: you can spend less and get higher quality, but on average Bay Area residents eat out more often than anyone else except New Yorkers, over 4x/week. I don't mean to sound discouraging. We love living here but there is no denying CA is an extremely expensive state. State income taxes are high and services are dwindling. You will find politics very different here than back East.

We Had an Earthquake

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We sure felt it! (Just north of Toronto). My dining room table, buffet and hutch were shaking like crazy. I thought I was having a dizzy spell but it was the house that was shaking, not me! It was wild! We have the G8 + G20 summits going on in Toronto right now, it's the first day. My first thought, after I realized that I wasn't fainting, was that it was an terrorist attack. To make matters even more interesting, we are now on a tornado watch. Just north of us was declared a state of emergency and there has been considerable damage to some parts around the Midland area. Now if all of this was happening on a tv show, I'd think "how unrealistic". LOL Earthquate (5.5) and tornado's all on the same day and in the city that the world leaders are in. I wonder what their first thoughts were ... ...so how was YOUR day? :-) BJ

foodonastump

2 years ago

…but if it's a roller rather than a jolter, you can watch the sine waves moving across the floor.

@plllog - You might be addressing a question I’ve had all day: The only other earthquake I remember feeling, it felt like the ground was swaying. Almost ike drunken spins. Today’s was just shaking. Are there different types?

plllog

2 years ago

last modified: 2 years ago

Oh, yes, there are indeed, and a great deal of what seems, at least to the non-seismologist like me, to be idiosyncrasy. There are deep epicenters, shallow and in between. There is rock, clay, gravel, and all kinds of other geology. Wave forms are refracted and when they hit each other the effect can be additive (like in math class) or neutralizing. There are minor faults, major faults and the exact edge of the plate. Under your feet or miles out to sea. It's not just the kind of quake at the epicenter, but what it's like when it gets to you. Perception doesn't always match the forms on the sensor readings. There are jolts, shakes, and rollers, plus lots of other descriptors.. Near the epicenter, if it's on land, one can often hear a bang first, I assume because sound travels faster in air than the shockwaves do in earth.

During the last big quake I was in, as I was watching those waves before we lost power (lights) and was identifying by sound what was falling, I was thinking, “Gosh, I’m glad I understand plate techtonics, or I'd be really scared.”

Islay Corbel

2 years ago

As long as everyone's ok. They showed the statue of Liberty shaking on TV this morning.

plllog

2 years ago

Most of the videos I've seen are the camera shaking. There's one, however, which seems to be from high in the statue, which implies that the statue shaking is shaking the camera, but then if you look at where the land meets the water, you can see that the view is moving a lot, and evenly, and it's the camera moving on its holder. No doubt Lady Liberty at least vibrated, and likely did full on shake, but it was too small a quake to produce that amount of visible shaking unless the waveforms joined and increased a lot, just there, which is possible, but not so likely.

Here, I found a report from a California deputy sheriff who was there. His reaction, which he reports as a casual, ”Feels like an earthquake,” and others around him agreeing, seems to indicate that it was pretty mild there. The park service ”evacuated” the visitors, but that's a fraught word for kicked them out. That would be, IMO, from caution, keeping people out until a full safety and damage inspection can be made, and in case a bigger quake might have followed, which could create falling debris and other problems,

https://www.ksbw.com/article/monterey-county-sheriffs-statue-liberty-earthquake-shakes-new-york-california-4-8/60412551

I realize this is a big deal where earthquakes are rare, and several buildings near the epicenter were seriously damaged, and I'm sure other buildings, especially older ones like Liberty, could have issues needing to be found and addressed, which just a bit of vibration can cause let alone full on shaking, but there's a lot of hype. This wasn't a disaster, Just a reminder that Earth's crust is constantly moving.

sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)
Original Author

2 years ago

last modified: 2 years ago

We had very high winds and flooding rains this past week. And the week before. Our truck back window shattered with winds picking up the back heavy cover and slaming it into the window. Windshield cracked due to a fallen tree limb.

City cameras are always shaking...but this event was dead calm/sunny, then a strong shaking rumble immediately.

I actually did not thing that much of it without any immediate damage reported. We live near an elementary school so the driving mph is very low/slow....snail pace. Felt like a run-away tractor trailer at high speed hitting pot holes.

I live in a glass house. Glanced outside and all trees were 'shaking' out of the blue on such a calm day. I just thought it was a freak wind gust.

Any unusual weather event should be taken seriously. Thankful that no buildings collapsed.

Every time i drive through the BatteryTunnel i think of StormSandy. NYC shut down the city.

A few days before the storm hit the city shut everything down. That mile long+ tunnel filled with water.

I'm sure many are thankful their buildings are built strong to support strong winds, etc

So call it 'mild' until you are in it and not sure if it might be devestating 30 seconds later.

plllog

2 years ago

Absolutely. And by the richter it was moderate, not mild. But that's after the fact with the reports in. During the quake, you don't know. That's why I looked at the report from the Californian. People native to the quake zone are rightly, um, shaken up. And weather is often so much worse. My point about the camera is that the kind of camera that shakes in the wind will shake a lot more than what it's attached to in a quake.

sleevendog (5a NY 6aNYC NL CA)
Original Author

2 years ago

I agree and i was not debating the intesity. Any camera high up will exagerate the 'wiggle' event. Like i said, i was not at all concerned until i heard it was a 'quake'. Explained our experiences. Where i was standing in the kitchen was over a solid base built into the rock ledge 40 yrs ago. The rumbling was over the half of our home that shook more intense on that end.

Some foundations may be compromised. Not immediately noticed.

chloebud

2 years ago

“It's not just the kind of quake at the epicenter, but what it's like when it gets to you.”

Some good explaining in your posts, plllog!

Rare NY earthquake, 4.8

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Rare NY earthquake, 4.8

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