Earth quake Experience

[Dutch Baka]

Hello everybody, I have a question about earth quakes in Japan.

Yesterday evening I was talking to my girl who live in Kobe, when a shake came suddenly, she was screaming a bit, and always when an earthquake (maybe I should call it tremor? my English isn’t always that good) came.

I know her now for more then a year, we are engaged, and are going to marry next year :p . But this last year, it happened like 4 times, that there were tremors in her area, I saw one the webcam also.

I’m always getting a little bit afraid, when I read about it, or I hear on the phone that there is one, my girl was in the earthquake of 95 and always she get memories of that time.

Now my question is, what is your experience with the first time you fell a earthquake, or tremor? Can I describe it as a road train of 3 wagons driving next to my house with 80km an hour?

I know I should dive under a table, and turn off the gas.

Just tell me your story, if you have one?

Arigato

[ArmandV]

I've been in several quakes since I live in Los Angeles, but the topper was the Northridge Earthquake of 1994.

The best description? I was sound asleep when it hit. If you remember in The Exorcist, Linda Blair's bed started jumping violently. That was the experience I had during the quake. I could not get out of bed to get to my daughter's room to get her into the hallway. The shaking kept throwing me back into bed.

I don't blame your girlfriend at all for being fearful. You'd have to experience it yourself to appreciate it. The Kobe Earthquake was stronger than the Northridge one. There's a museum in Kobe that has a filmed reinactment of the quake that was made by Koichi Kawakita, who was the special effects director of the 1990s Godzilla films. You should go see it.

[iwao]

well, I can't compare it with a train ...
the strongest earthquake I felt in Japan was 4.something during a night in 1996 (I have been in J when there was the Hanshin EQ). Shaking didn't make me nervous but that sound, which seemed to come straight out of the earth (that was just the shaking of the houses)...
I have been to the headquarter of the firebrigade in Tokyo (I think it is in Shinjuku) where they have an EQ simulator (free to use; you get instructions how to behave)

[Brooker]

It's very unnerving. I was on the 26th floor of a skyscraper in Yokohama during a medium sized earthquake and there were several earthquakes I felt while sleeping at my rickety gaijin house in Tokyo. We always think of the ground beneath us as being very stable and dependable, but experiencing an earthquake makes you rethink that.

[Sensuikan San]

It's very unnerving.....We always think of the ground beneath us as being very stable and dependable, but experiencing an earthquake makes you rethink that.

I couldn't agree more .... and I haven't experienced a really strong one.

I have experienced three in my lifetime, the first occurring where you would least expect it ..... in England ! (Yes, it happens, now and again .... !) I can't remember the date, but it was way back inthe 1950's; I was still a young boy, and in bed at the time. I woke up to find the whole room shaking, and can distinctly remember the light fitting swaying back and forth. It seemed to last for ever, although it couldn't have been more than ten to fifteen seconds of movement. There was even property damage too ! One guy in our area had his greenhouse collapse, and somebody lost a chimney, if I recall. Most unusual.

The second was also unexpected, in Toronto, around 1984 I think. Just a few seconds, but our office rocked around quite noticeably. Conversation froze for the duration !

The last one was not so unexpected .... I now live in the Pacific Northwest. A couple or three years ago we had a 6.3, just offshore and mercifully, quite deep.

I knew something was wrong when my office chair, with me in it, started to roll back and forth away from my desk ! Curiously, the staff of the office gathered around the Xerox machine and started to discuss it .... in spite of several aftershocks taking place .... and a well advertised procedure being in place!

Being made of "stern stuff", I called to them from the car park (to which I had already bolted ...) .... and persuaded them that it would be a good idea to evacuate the building ....!

Finally - they agreed ....

[lem2000]

I think it depends on the size of hte earthquake. I live in the San Franciso Bay area, and I was here when the "big on" hit about 15 years ago. I was also in Japan (Nagoya) for the "big on" there. In general, most quakes are a sharp jolt, and that's it (the Earth letting off some pressure). Other small ones are like a big line of trucks going by (a rumble, and minor shaking). Big ones are like the bed described above .. lots of shaking and rolling. Japan gets alot of them through, being on the Pacific Rim. Most are small, like around here.

-lance

[PopCulturePooka]

Haha I slept through the largest quake felt in Tokyo last year.

[Dutch Baka]

I went to the Disaster Reduction museum today here in Kobe, which is made to give more information about the Kobe earthquake from 1996.

It was really impressive to see the images, movies, and even talked to some people who experienced it.

One of the nice things of the museum was that they have a Earthquake Simulator, which I of course needed to try. It simulated the Kobe earthquake 7 on the richer scale, and I most say it was SCARY!!! If I would be in an earthquake as big as this one I would go crazy.