Shake, Rattle, and Roll

Last night we had our first real significant earthquake since living in Silicon Valley! A little after eight o'clock a magnitude 5.6 temblor hit the Calaveras fault just about 8-9 miles east of where we live. My understanding is that the deeper an earthquake is the larger and more sever it can be. This quake was roughly 5 miles deep which is not terribly deep as earthquakes go. You can read about it in the Mercury news online here.

When it hit I was sitting downstairs working on my computer when all of a sudden it sounded like the ceiling was going to fall in. What really surprised me was the noise. I have often heard of these things described as a "freight train" going by. I would describe it as 10 kids upstairs jumping off of the bed, and was actually my first instinct. I thought "why are the kids running around at this hour?" but that thought quickly went from my head and I ran upstairs and found Melissa and the kids scrambling to get into a doorway. It lasted about 30 seconds so there was enough time to huddle there together and calm the kids down. We did not have any damage from the quake but all the chandeliers in the house were swaying back and forth pretty severely. I went downstairs and checked the USGS site and the temblor was shown pretty quickly on their site here.

We called a couple of friends in the bay area to see how they felt it and I even was on instant messenger with a co-worker Danielle whose husband Alexis is out of town.

Anyway very