So this afternoon there was a 7.2 magnitude Earthquake (revised up from the original 6.9 estimate by the USGS) in Baja, Mexico that gave all of Southern California (and parts of Arizona) a pretty good shake. I'm about 6 miles outside of downtown San Diego, and our entire place was shaking and swaying for a good 30 seconds, if not longer. A bunch of smaller items fell off our shelves, picture frames went askew, and the drawers on my file cabinet opened themselves, but that was it. The 5.1 & 5.4 aftershocks caused a few more items to fall over, and freaked the shit out of my cats.
In Mexicali, there have been reports of some serious damage to buildings, and at least one street just completely cracked apart (http://tweetphoto.com/17203656) but amazingly it looks like no one was seriously injured or killed.
I know there's a few people on here in SoCal (and AZ), so I hope everyone managed to stay safe during the quake, etc. For those curious, today's quake here was 7.2, the quake in Haiti last year was 7.0, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake was 6.7, and the '89 Quake in San Francisco was 6.9. It is my understanding of the Richter scale that a .1 or .2 increase in magnitude is not just an incremental step up in power, but can actually mean more than double the power.
In Mexicali, there have been reports of some serious damage to buildings, and at least one street just completely cracked apart (http://tweetphoto.com/17203656) but amazingly it looks like no one was seriously injured or killed.
I know there's a few people on here in SoCal (and AZ), so I hope everyone managed to stay safe during the quake, etc. For those curious, today's quake here was 7.2, the quake in Haiti last year was 7.0, the 1994 Northridge Earthquake was 6.7, and the '89 Quake in San Francisco was 6.9. It is my understanding of the Richter scale that a .1 or .2 increase in magnitude is not just an incremental step up in power, but can actually mean more than double the power.
