Wow, what a day today has been. I moved here back in 1999 and have never felt something this big. Not even living in California. Our day started around 6:30 am. I went thru my usual routine of making coffee and turning on my computer to check email. This morning, I also had an item to bid on eBay that would end at 7:45 am. Got my coffee and sat at the computer reading email and checking on this eBay item.
At 7:07, we felt a small rattle in our new home and I thought, “Oh, a small earthquake.” Well, unlike the earthquakes I have been thru in CA which has a lot of swaying from side to side, our house felt like someone picked it up and started shaking it harder and harder. I just had time to tell Debbie, “Get out of the house.” So we ran out of the house onto our unlandscaped yard next to our car. The car started shaking up and down even worse and it was the scariest shaker I have ever been thru. We stood outside a few minutes and saw all our neighbors outside also, every checking to see if others were ok. We are all new in our neighborhood so we only knew a few people.
We started to clean up the house and at about 10:30, there was another shaker and we had to run out of the house again. We just learned tonite that the power automatically goes off at the power stations when motion sensors are tripped. Also found out later that the first one was a 6.6 and the second one was a 4.9 magnitude. It FELT like close to an 8.0 because we were only about 20 miles from the epicenter which was just out in the ocean west of us. Fortunately, our new house came thru with very minor damage. Only a few things fell out of the cupboards and we heard of some neighbors who has everything come out of their cabinets. We also heard that Honolulu on Oahu, about 200 mi away, lost most of their power and there are parts that are still without power tonite. Our power came back on about 1:30 pm. We had planned to go into town today, but most folks were staying close to home after something like this. There were also numerous aftershocks thruout the afternoon each one getting smaller but always feeling like another signal to run outside.
Ken and Barbara came over for dinner and we had a nice, very impromptu dinner, mostly cold dishes and pleasant conversation. There was some speculation of what Madame Pele was up to but also wonder at how the epicenter was NW of where we live and how all the active volcanoes are SE of us too. Perhaps there is a new vent opening up under the ocean. Most of all, we look at is as pressure being released by the earth so that we don’t have to have the “Mother of all Earthquakes.” And NO tsunamis, thanks god.
most of his treatment. I have some photos of Kinkers before the onset of his FIP and I heard he slept the rest of the afternoon.
