Very early this morning, at 2:17 AM, there was a tremor from an earthquake that occurred just off the coast of the Hermosa Beach area. Somewhere in the ocean, the earth moved and we Angelenos shook with it. Panda and I were still up and felt the swaying sort of shaking motion for just a few seconds. I watched as his laptop and desk lamp jiggled before settling. We looked at each other, alert and ready for any signs of a larger quake to come. I contemplated the size of the space beneath the desk.
And of course, I went to the place that gives me all the buzz – Twitter. Plenty of others had felt it and soon enough, I found a map and details of the 3.6er. I always get a bit nauseous when I experience a rolling quake and definitely felt a little seasick afterwards. Kind of ironic since I don’t get seasick easily, if at all. Then again, the ground moving beneath you can certainly be a powerful force.
Naught but 15 hours later, I was at work, closer to the epicenter of that quake when another one, a 3.7 this time, jerked our little office building. The earthquake seemed to pretty much come from the same spot and I wonder if these are precursors to the large one everyone’s kind of been waiting for. The one in the afternoon was far more abrupt and seemed like the shaking, shuddering kind of earthquake you see in the movies. Usually I get the rolling wave kind of feel, which might be due to the structure of the earth beneath the areas I was in. Panda says the LA basin’s sediment is not as hard as other areas so we tend to feel more rollers.
I hope we’re all prepared for when that scary one comes along to rattle us all, and certainly do some property damage.
