Various Earthquake Experiences posted on Usenet

From halstead@nbn.com Wed Apr 12 00:49:47 PDT 1995
Article: 1945 of sci.geo.earthquakes
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From: halstead@nbn.com (J.C. HALSTEAD)
Newsgroups: sci.geo.earthquakes
Subject: Re: Earthquake Experiences
Date: Tue, 04 Apr 1995 13:02:34 -0800
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Earthquake Diary

Tuesday, October 17, 1989

It seemed like just another mild earthquake, until I turned the corner and looked down the street, where my roommate was standing on the sidewalk and a pile of rubble lay just past him. The chimney on the roof of the three-story apartment building on the far corner had come down, dumping about a hundred cubic feet of red bricks on the sidewalk. I went into the house to get Jimıs shoes, since he had been asleep and was afraid to stay in the house while it was shaking. There was a lot of glass in the living room and pieces of plaster and dust everywhere. We had a dial tone on the phone for about the first half hour but then just static, and no electricity or gas. We did have one call from Joe, who lives in the South of Market; his building had minor damage. He was watching the World Series when the quake struck; the announcer said "Oh-Oh" and then the screen went black. Jerry from upstairs came down and walked around on the sidewalk clutching the cross around his neck; he collects antique dishes, apparently lost quite few and couldnıt bear to stay in the house. He was also very worried about his lover, Curt, who was at City College.

I changed into shorts since it was so hot and thought about packing a bag and leaving it in the car but I got distracted at that thought and decided to try the car radio, which doesn't work very well anyway, and it didn't. Jim's art was hanging at a local bar so we checked on it and there was very little damage there so we decided to walk around the Castro and see what was going on. People passing on the sidewalk mentioned that part of the Bay Bridge was down; I immediately figured that it would be the approach from Oakland and, noting it was rush hour, that this earthquake would have a very high death toll. As we walked onto Market Street at Castro, we could see giant clouds of brown smoke drifting west from the Marina district. I didn't know the Marina was once a lagoon and that sand had been used as fill, creating a dangerous liquefaction problem.

It became apparent that most businesses were closed since they had electronic cash registers. Also, it's hard stepping over stuff that fell off shelves in the dark! We decided to try the Pilsner bar to see if any of my friends from bowling were there and ran into one of them, who was tending bar and waiting for a relief. No one came, so he decided to close the bar and go check on his house.

When we got back home, we hung out on the front porch for a while but had no contact or information since nobody had a radio - need to add that to our shopping list. The phones were completely out at that point, about 6:30 p.m., and still no sign of my cat. He appeared at about 8 and had spent the time under the house. Chris, who lives downstairs, is a nurse and was due on duty at S.F. General, so I drove him over there. It was dark by now, but people were acting out four-way stops at all the intersections and there was no real traffic problem. The hard part was trying to tell where we were, since you get used to orienting yourself by the lights in the city at night and there werenıt any. I was unable to identify Mission Street as I couldnıt read the street signs until I was on top of them. Car headlights seemed incredibly bright but also showed just how dark it was; many stars were visible, and the moon had not yet risen.

After dropping Chris at General I returned home and found that Curt had returned from City College, having walked all the way from Forest Hill. He had met a woman on the bus and the two of them, neither having any sense of direction, had walked north instead of east and around U.C. before going up and over the hill to the Castro, a distance of about six miles. The lady he was travelling with needed a ride to Potrero Hill, three miles away, so of course I drove her over and Jerry and Curt went with me.

This was my second trip out in the car, and I was cursing the fact that since my antenna had been broken off we couldnıt get anything on the radio and that the windshield had slaughtered so many bugs on the way back from Russian River last weekend that we could hardly see out. We stopped at Dolores Park on the way back to see what we could see. Some of the highrises were lit up, probably from emergency generators, and the U.S. Mint was easily the brightest thing on the skyline. Clouds and smoke were drifting over the downtown area; now, as the wind shifted and came from the west, with smoke and clouds of different shades, it looked like a battle scene from "Star Wars". The Bay Bridge was completely dark, and there were only a few lights on in the East Bay.

When I returned, Jim and I walked around the Castro where we heard the first really bad news: three miles of the Nimitz freeway had pancaked. It was at that point that I began to assess this as a major earthquake, and I guessed that it would have to be at least a magnitude 7, with an epicenter within 60 miles of San Francisco, a loss of life over 200, and $1 billion property damage.

We sat on the front porch for awhile, lamenting the fact that there just wasnıt much to do without electricity. I watched the moon rise over the Edwardian and Victorian buildings across the street and thought of all the writers who had described the sunrise over a battlefield and the sunset over a Europe in flames during WWI. I counted ten aftershocks before I decided to turn in at around 10:30; my brother and sister-in-law called from Novato about 15 minutes later. Their electricity blinked and they stood in a doorway together during the quake. At the time they called, they were watching TV and a tourist from Oklahoma had taken a video of the woman trying to jump the gap in the Bay Bridge. She very nearly made it, but cracked her car up badly and died later at the hospital.

I was awakened again at midnight when the VCR cycled and I realized the power was on. I turned on the TV and was confronted with the problems on the Bay Bridge, the Cypress freeway, and the fire in the Marina. At about 1, the first pictures were shown of an auto repair shop on fire in Berkeley that was, mercifully, empty. That was the first time I got to see the footage of the woman trying to jump the gap in the Bay Bridge. It appeared that in fact the car did not go through the structure into the Bay, as we had heard in the Castro earlier. Of course, things were magnified early on. I was hoping that this would be an exaggeration, and the earthquake was small and nearby. The first reports showing the epicenter in Hollister were coming in, which confirmed that this was a much stronger earthquake than I thought while it was happening. Seismologists were initially reporting it as 6.9 or 7.0, with no news from the area around the epicenter at that time. I counted ten aftershocks that first evening; the first one was large and came within a half hour of the first shock.

Wednesday, October 18

I managed to get through to my mother in Oregon, who was worried and hadnıt been able to sleep, but I put her fears to rest and she went off to play bridge. We spent Wednesday morning cleaning house. There are plaster cracks in all the walls, and it took me over an hour just to vacuum my bedroom. I finally went out and got sandwiches for lunch at a deli, since there were long lines for all the restaurants that were open. I had to get away from it all for a while, so I walked over the hill to Golden Gate Park (checking the bowling alley first; it was closed) and then to Ocean Beach, and back, about 8 miles. I didnıt notice any damage in the park, although there were some utilities people digging at the Great Highway.

Thursday, October 19

It was another warm day, and the air conditioning in the building wasnıt working very well, so I went around closing all the blinds on the west and south sides of this floor. I had to deliver something to 45 Fremont and the passageway between the two buildings, which is on the 14th floor and about 30 feet long, was unusable so I had to go outside and up and down and back. That building seem to have fewer cracks than ours but it is newer and designed to more current standards. However, I walked past one of the libraries and most of its contents were on the floor. Many of the stacks were supported at the top to keep them up; those that weren't had toppled over.

My bowling team had to postpone the early league since we have one member in Fairfield and one in Alameda, so I went back home and finished off the chocolate cake in the ice box. The late league went as planned, but the team we were to bowl didn't show up - at least we finished early. I had a 211, 150, and 181; Rob was the star of the evening with 251, 228 and 159 for 638; that score is second high in the league (to my 643). Rob was actually in downtown Oakland during the quake, although he lives and works in Marin, and spent the night in the East Bay. Got home and to bed by 11:30; didnıt notice any aftershocks since 3:15 a.m.

Friday, October 20

Most of our staff is in the office today with their tales, for the most part, of just being shaken. Two of our engineers were stopped about 100 yards west of the collapse on the Bay Bridge (in separate vehicles) and wound up walking back to Treasure Island. Four of the engineers in our group were in the Bechtel building and retreated to the lobby down the fire stairs with two Japanese clients in tow, who were "scared shitless", surprising since they live in Tokyo, famous for its large and frequent earthquakes. One person was in the Muni subway and said that the passengers were blaming the trainıs motion on the driver until the earthquake was announced. And one of the secretaries will be out until next Wednesday, after the funeral of her friend who was killed when the Cypress collapsed.

Some slightly better news is filtering out: Apparently there were less cars in the Cypress freeway than previously thought. Reports up until yesterday were claiming 75 dead in that area but the number is now far less.

One news item in today's Examiner caught my eye: Project Open Hand, which delivers 650 lunches and an equal number of dinners to housebound Aids patients, hired a new executive chef at 2:00 p.m. on the day of the quake. On his first day on the job, Jonathon Walker supervised the planning and cooking of 6,544 meals for emergency workers and victims of the earthquake! I guess itıs not a bad job if you can survive the first day.

From thoupt@Dayton.fsp.com Wed Apr 12 00:52:14 PDT 1995
Article: 2002 of sci.geo.earthquakes
Newsgroups: sci.geo.earthquakes
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From: thoupt@Dayton.fsp.com (Tracy Houpt)
Subject: Actual Account New Madrid Earthquake
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Organization: Freelance Systems Programming, Dayton, Ohio (513) 254-7246
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 03:58:12 GMT
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(The following letter was found in a book entitled, "Lorenzo Dow's Journal," Published By Joshua Martin, Printed By John B. Wolff, 1849, on pages 344 - 346.)

New Madrid, Territory of Missouri, March 22, 1816

On the 16th of December, 1811, about two o'clock, A.M., we were visited by a violent shock of an earthquake, accompanied by a very awful noise resembling loud but distant thunder, but more hoarse and vibrating, which was followed in a few minutes by the complete saturation of the atmosphere, with sulphurious vapor, causing total darkness. The screams of the affrighted inhabitants running to and fro, not knowing where to go, or what to do - the cries of the fowls and beasts of every species - the cracking of trees falling, and the roaring of the Mississippi - the current of which was retrogade for a few minutes, owing as is supposed, to an irruption in its bed -- formed a scene truly horrible.

From that time until about sunrise, a number of lighter shocks occurred; at which time one still more violent than the first took place, with the same accompaniments as the first, and the terror which had been excited in everyone, and indeed in all animal nature, was now, if possible doubled. The inhabitants fled in every direction to the country, supposing (if it can be admitted that their minds can be exercised at all) that there was less danger at a distance from, than near to the river. In one person, a female, the alarm was so great that she fainted, and could not be recovered.

There were several shocks of a day, but lighter than those already mentioned until the 23d of January, 1812, when one occurred as violent as the severest of the former ones, accompanied by the same phenomena as the former. From this time until the 4th of February the earth was in continual agitation, visibly waving as a gentle sea. On that day there was another shock, nearly as hard as the proceeding ones. Next day four such, and on the 7th about 4 o'clock A.M., a concussion took place so much more violent than those that had proceeded it, that it was dominated the hard shock. The awful darkness of the atmosphere, which was formerly saturated with sulphurious vapor, and the violence of the tempestuous thundering noise that accompanied it, together with all of the other phenomena mentioned as attending the former ones, formed a scene, the description of which would require the most sublimely fanciful imagination.

At first the Mississippi seemed to recede from its banks, and its waters gathering up like a mountain, leaving for the moment many boats, which were here on their way to New Orleans, on bare sand, in which time the poor sailors made their escape from them. It then rising fifteen to twenty feet perpendicularly, and expanding, as it were, at the same moment, the banks were overflowed with the retrogade current, rapid as a torrent - the boats which before had been left on the sand were now torn from their moorings, and suddenly driven up a little creek, at the mouth of which they laid, to the distance in some instances, of nearly a quarter of a mile. The river falling immediately, as rapid as it had risen, receded in its banks again with such violence, that it took with it whole groves of young cotton-wood trees, which ledged its borders. They were broken off which such regularity, in some instances, that persons who had not witnessed the fact, would be difficultly persuaded, that is has not been the work of art. A great many fish were left on the banks, being unable to keep pace with the water. The river was literally covered with the wrecks of boats, and 'tis said that one was wrecked in which there was a lady and six children, all of whom were lost.

In all the hard shocks mentioned, the earth was horribly torn to pieces - the surface of hundreds of acres, was, from time to time, covered over, in various depths, by the sand which issued from the fissures, which were made in great numbers all over this country, some of which closed up immediately after they had vomited forth their sand and water, which it must be remarked, was the matter generally thrown up. In some places, however, there was a substance somewhat resembling coal, or impure stone coal, thrown up with the sand. It is impossible to say what the depths of the fissures or irregular breaks were; we have reason to believe that some of them are very deep.

The site of this town was evidently settled down at least fifteen feet, and not more than a half a mile below the town there does not appear to be any alteration on the bank of the river, but back from the river a small distance, the numerous large ponds or lakes, as they are called, which covered a great part of the country were nearly dried up. The beds of some of them are elevated above their former banks several feet, producing an alteration of ten, fifteen to twenty feet, from their original state. And lately it has been discovered that a lake was formed on the opposite side of the Mississippi, in the Indian country, upwards of one hundred miles in length, and from one to six miles in width, of the depth of ten to fifty feet. It has communication with the river at both ends, and it is conjectured that it will not be many years before the principal part, if not the whole of the Mississippi, will pass that way.

We were constrained by the fear of our houses falling to live twelve or eighteen months, after the first shocks, in little light camps made of boards; but we gradually became callous, and returned to our houses again. Most of those who fled from the country in the time of the hard shocks have since returned home. We have, since the commencement in 1811, and still continue to feel, slight shocks occasionally. It is seldom indeed that we are more than a week without feeling one, and sometimes three of four in a day. There were two this winter past much harder than we had felt them for two years before; but since then they appear to be lighter than they have ever been, and we begin to hope that ere long they will entirely cease.

I have now, sir, finished my promised description of the earthquake - imperfect it is true, but just as it occurred to my memory; many of, and most of the truly awful scenes, having occurred three or four years ago. They of course are not related with that precision which would entitle it to the character of a full and accurate picture. But such as it is, it is given with pleasure - in the full confidence that it is given to a friend. And now, sir, wishing you all good, I must bid you adieu.

Your humble servant,
Eliza Bryan

There is one circumstance which I think worthy of remark. This country was formerly subject to very hard thunder; but for more than twelve months before the commencement of the earthquake there was none at all, and but very little since, a great part of which resembles subterraneous thunder. The shocks still continue, but are growing more light, and less frequent. -E.B.