Earthquake in VA.Follow

It's usually transplants who can't drive in California. They get confused by 6 lane freeways, can't figure out how to not bottle up traffic, and don't realize that the roads get really really slick when it rains for the first time in 6 months. There's a difference between taking reasonable precautions because of a very real danger, and overreacting to something that is completely harmless. Or, even more amusing, grossly over exaggerating the actual effects of that harmless thing.

It's a 5.8. It was over 80 miles from the capital. Nearly 300 miles from NY (and Southern Ohio), and even farther from Boston. You can feel a 5.8 from 80 miles away, but it's pretty mild. A sensation of motion, and some swaying of stuff around you, with really precariously held together stuff maybe falling. 300 miles? You can feel a 5.8 at that distance, but it's not going to do any damage. Boston? I'm frankly amazed they even felt it at all, yet they were evacuating buildings. Amazing overreaction IMO.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2011 3:47pm by gbaji

Which means you're about a hundred miles closer to the epicenter than NY, and nearly 300 miles closer than Boston. I'm not discounting folks in tall non-earthquake designed buildings noticing it pretty well, but it couldn't have been more than just noticing that it was an earthquake and then getting scared because it was an earthquake and not because of anything it actually did.

I've only been in one earthquake, back in 2nd or 3rd grade or so, right outside Charleston, South Carolina. Which apparently is where many of the earthquakes in that state originate. It lasted for quite some time, and I was in the Cafeteria eating lunch at school at the time. Large speakers were swaying and bouncing on their support changes. It was a bit scary... and I was ... 7 at the time?

That shake site is pretty good. Looked it up, 8/21/1992, a 4.1 Earthquake right outside Charleston. I would have been in 2nd Grade at the time. The earthquake zone is even named after the town I lived in.

Middleton Place-Summerville Seismic Zone
The Middleton Place-Summerville seismic zone (MPSSZ) is the most active (nonreservoir induced) seismic source zone in the Coastal Plain.


Michigan is pretty much Earthquake free. Hazard level of 0, one registered earth quake in the last 16 years.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2011 7:25pm by TirithRR

You have to realize that the geography of the area we're talking about.The mantel is far more stable here, so when there is a earthquake it may be felt farther then you will experience out west.

From the reports I gotten from friends anyone west of the mountains in VA, didn't feel the quake as much as those who lived NE of the epicenter. I was actually surprised at how far the quake was from us, since all I had to compared was the 6.0 Coalinga Quake, that I lived 20 miles nearly due west to, in 1983.

That one was a more rolling motion, compare to this one that felt far more like going over the rumble strip on the shoulder of the road. With building codes that don't expect major quakes, though historical the Madrid Quake has made many people wonder if they should, we have damage as far away as Baltimore from what I had heard.

Ah, so you just can't drive in the rain and need to freak out. Well, rain is much more dangerous than an earthquake so that makes sense.

Go on now and get all defensive and tell just how dangerous this scary... "rain"... is

165 people die in the US each year from rain related effects (flooding, crashes, collapsing roofs, etc). That's just "heavy rain and floods", and does not count deaths due to lightning, hurricanes, tornadoes, windstorms, and other weather related effects. We're just looking at people who die because moisture comes down from the sky in the form of rain. In contrast, over the past 30 years, 145 people have died in the US from earthquakes.

So yeah. Rain is a hell of a lot more dangerous than Earthquakes. About 12 times more dangerous.

Want me to look up yearly property damage from rain and compare to earthquakes as well? I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest we'll see a similar result.



/shrug

I don't see people panicking because it's raining Joph. So in the whole "who's a chicken" debate, I think Californians win over New Yorkers hands down.

South Carolina is not Southern California. South Carolina gets about 4 times as much rain per year (and that's statewide average, Southern California gets about half the state average), so whatever effect you were seeing probably didn't actually have anything to do with high oil buildup (or not much). I fully accept that folks in other parts of the country may just be crappy drivers.


If you were driving in Southern California and you saw this, I guarantee you'd notice the slipperiness of the roads as well. It's extremely noticeable if you try to make a fast turn, or accelerate too fast. I've seen a car, starting from a stop at a left turn light, traveling at what would be a completely normal speed just spin out in the middle of the intersection and slide into the the far corner (thankfully missing the cars sitting at the light facing the other direction, but not by much). His mistake? He accelerated at a fast but normally completely safe speed while making a turn. All while a very gentle light rain was going on.


What usually happens is that people who are used to driving in rain come to California and about 6 months later it rains for the first time. They see everyone slowing down and cautiously making turns and whatnot and think "These people don't know how to drive in the rain. Hahaha!". That person drives faster thinking he's cooler or better than everyone else, then he hits a slick spot, or just takes a turn too fast, and spins out and sheepishly becomes one of those people on the side of the road that everyone thinks are Californians who can't drive in the rain.

No, you just magically find yourself incapable of driving because you have magical dangerous rain

I remember in January you guys shutting down your roads and stranding people because of a little snow and rain.

What was it? A whole six inches in Lancaster?

Whenever my family from San Diego comes out east, they always panic when it's like 50 degrees out. My cousin bundles her kids in like 8 layers of clothes, and they constantly say things like "How can you people stand this?!"

Also, gbaji is getting epically trolled.

And that was sufficient to actually flood the roads necessitating the shutdown out of an actual real safety hazard. I get evacuating buildings if there's actual structural damage caused by an earthquake, just as I get closing a road if there's actual flooding. But closing and evacuating nearly every government building in a 500 mile radius of a 5.8 earthquake is a gross overreaction.

It would be like closing every road in the state because of a slightly heavier than normal morning dew.



And yeah, I get that people on the East Coast aren't used to that. But that's the point. They're overreacting because it's something unknown that they aren't used to, and it scares them. It's just amazing to me that an amount of shaking that people here would maybe pause briefly to comment on and then shrug and continue whatever they were doing would prompt such widespread and massive panic and confusion. It would never occur to me to evacuate a building I was in just because of a 5.8 earthquake (or equivalent, yes I'm aware of the construction differences), and no one would call for an evacuation unless there was actual damage and danger.


It's really about perception differences. People who've never lived in areas with lots of earthquakes only know what they've seen on TV and in movies, where everything shakes violently and buildings crumble and fall everywhere. They think that's what all earthquakes are like and assume that any building they're in may crumble and collapse from any earthquake large enough for them to feel. The rest of us know that this isn't the case and don't worry about them unless the building we're in actually collapses, or causes some sort of danger. We know that as a general rule, if the earthquake didn't actually cause the building you're in to collapse, odds are that it's not going to collapse, so there's no need to panic.

The rain in California is magical and extremely dangerous!!




They don't spaz out over 6" of rain.

Edited, Aug 23rd 2011 9:21pm by Jophiel