Bad -7.1 - Earthquake Here

Started by gitano, November 30, 2018, 12:08:45 PM

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sakorick

How much stuff did you find that you didn't know you had??:laugh:
Talk to yourself. There are times you need expert advice.

gitano

Be nicer than necessary.

branxhunter

Glad you and yours are all OK Paul with just a bit of skin off here and there, so to speak.

To some people that reloading room photo might be situation normal!

Marcus

Nelsdou

Good to hear you and yours have come through this without physical injury. What a mess a quake make is astonishing. Hope the transportation routes can get remedied before winter weather sets in!

Nels
Put it into perspective; we live on a rock hurtling through space, what could be scarier than that?

gitano

Thanks, fellas.

Nels - "Winter weather" set in about two months ago. :D But... while there were several areas of major damage, the primary transportation arteries are functioning at 100% or close to it. (Humans are busy little beavers, aren't we!) We are told on the news this morning that the last major repair should be complete in "a few days". There will remain a few important bridges that will need repair/rebuild, and that won't happen for a while; maybe as long as next spring. However, for me and my family, the transportation-related problems have no direct impact on us.

Now that the inspections of public buildings have been completed, it turns out at least one school has been condemned, and three more will be closed "indefinitely" until repairs are effected and they are deemed safe to occupy. At the moment, I have not heard of any other public buildings that have been closed. To the best of my knowledge, there was only one house that was "destroyed", but I don't think all of that information is public yet. Facebook has a feature that allows people to "ask for" and "offer" help following a natural disaster. On that page the day after the earthquake, I noted 47 requests for help and 247 offers of help. (All of the ones I saw were housing related.) I'm sure no one is "out in the cold". While having a roof over your head is "good", it's small consolation in the long run if your house has been rendered unsafe to occupy.

Marcus - WRT "To some people that reloading room photo might be situation normal"... Like I said, it wasn't as big a problem to clean up as I thought. ;)

It's been kind of surprising when days later I find something "new" related to the earthquake.  Little things "down" or otherwise out of place. Also, I find myself psychologically hesitant to put some things back "up" when I know in the back of my mind that they won't be 'safe'. Both from a "breakable" perspective, but also as potential "missiles"! I have decided that I am going to redo ALL of the "stuffed heads" with French cleats! (See image below of French cleat.)

I had my first earthquake 'nightmare' yesterday afternoon. I fell asleep watching a Youtube video. I dreamed that I was sitting on the toilet, an earthquake hit, and the house started SPINNING around! I suppose that dream might be a function of the fact that we are still getting aftershocks in excess of 5.0  on the Richter scale. Had just such a one when I started writing this post.  

Again, thanks for all the well-wishes and concerns!

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

Jamie.270

Finding things amiss or damaged later is very common.  Especially things like cracks in foundation walls that magically appear in the month or days that it takes a house to resettle after the ground beneath it gets shook.
BOTL for windows and doors that don't close like they used to, and/or gaps that appear in cabinet-wall joints etc.  They may be minor, or at least seem that way, but could be an indicator of more severe damage elsewhere.
QuoteRestrictive gun laws that leave good people helpless, don\'t have the power to render bad people harmless.

To believe otherwise is folly. --  Me

gitano

One thing I haven't checked for is missing pieces of the 'phony-stone' veneer I have on my house. I didn't hear any of the pieces hitting the deck, and I haven't seen any from the views I have through windows, but I haven't walked around the building to look for that sort of damage.

My house has a "prow" front. Meaning that it comes to a point of sorts. The ceiling over the living room, at the front of the building, is 28 feet above the living room floor. (It's a post-and-beam construction.) At the prow, there is glass from the floor to the ceiling and 12 feet wide: Two French doors at floor level, eight 3'x6' windows, and four trapezoidal windows at the top. They all survived without damage. That in itself is pretty amazing to me! We have another "picture window" (4'x8') in the dining room, that also escaped without damage. Computer monitors, printers, and microscopes all ended up on the floor, but none of them damaged as far as I have seen. (I haven't tested the printers or a couple of the monitors. The microscopes are fine.) All of the doors have worked so far, and I don't think there are any that haven't been used multiple times. The external walls of this house can't have "cracks" because they are stressed-skin panels. They're either intact, or destroyed. (Kinda like carbon-graphite arrows: Either they're straight, or broken beyond use.) The internal, stick-framed walls (with their sheetrock skins) are all intact. The pressure tank, hot water maker, boiler, and all the in-floor heating system is intact and without leaks, including the garage. (Which, is NOT stress-skin panel, and is slab-on-grade.) While lots of stuff I wish hadn't fallen off of shelves in the garage, did, the lathe and mill did not topple over. YAY! In my wood shop, I have wood storage hangers on the 13' ceiling that I have worried about "in an earthquake", since I installed them. No cracks in the foundation/slab, no cracks in the walls, and the storage hangers and the lumber in them "stayed put". I repeat: "It's amazing what didn't break!"

Because I built this house and garage, it might be easy to start 'breaking my arm patting myself on the back'. However, the 'survival' of my house and garage must be taken in the context of every other building in the 'strike zone'. EVERYONE'S house did just fine, as did MOST of the public buildings. (And thank God for that!) Therefore, the fact that my house and garage are still standing, relatively undamaged, says NOTHING about my building skills whatsoever.

As I said before, we were very fortunate!

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

Jamie.270

It sounds like you and your neighbors built in the right place too!
Liquefaction does ugly things to semi rigid structures that are placed atop soil subject to it in a quake.
That's the problem with almost the entire Willamette Valley.  When the Cascadia subduction happens, this place is gonna be a mess.
QuoteRestrictive gun laws that leave good people helpless, don\'t have the power to render bad people harmless.

To believe otherwise is folly. --  Me

gitano

After the '64 earthquake, (second largest in recorded history), Anchorage knew EXACTLY where they could and couldn't build. However, as is always the case with humans, they have short memories of bad events. (I suppose that has it's good points, too.) As you must have guessed, they have built right on top of where ALL the geologists said, "DON'T BUILD HERE!". The ground those buildings are on WILL turn to "water" if the earth shakes. This is one reason why I was so surprised that there wasn't more damage in Anchorage with this quake.

On the contrary, most of "the Valley" is glacial moraine. I don't know how stable moraine is relative to other substrates, but based on this most recent event, it appears to be "pretty good". The places in the Valley with the most damage were not on "native" soil.  In other words, they were on dirt "brought in" from elsewhere and "built up". Roadbeds are the best example of this, and they were, for the most part, the structures that suffered the greatest damage.

The entire west coast of the US is an earthquake 'danger zone'. Some places are a bit worse than others, but the fact is, the Pacific Plate meets the North American plate over the entire length of  the west coast. I read that San Andreas earthquakes are VERY periodic, AND, that it is OVERDUE by about 200 years if I remember correctly. THAT'S going to be a BAD one!

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

gitano

Turns out, more and more buildings are being condemned. Mostly schools. There's one in the Valley that is closed for the rest of the school year, and two in Anchorage. So far. There are half a dozen in the Valley that are NOT opening tomorrow, requiring "more comprehensive evaluation", and another six in Anchorage. The schools in Anchorage are all older ones. The high school my wife taught at and our girls attended is in pretty bad shape. I suspect it may be condemned. Large cinder blocks from which the walls were built, are strewn about the floor over much of the school. The middle school where my youngest teaches is NOT opening tomorrow like several of the less damaged schools are. It MAY open on Monday IF further inspection reveals that it is safe to occupy. Many gov't bldgs are still closed, or only partially occupied until comprehensive inspections can be performed. Gov't related "things" (like the VA) are still not back to 100% or are REALLY "backed up".

I hate to sound like a broken record, but I have to say, "It could have been MUCH worse!"

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

Paul Hoskins

My brother and his family survived the quake in 1964 when he was stationed up there in the AF. The quake destroyed everything they owned including the car but they were unhurt for the most part. Very fortunate.   .......Paul H

gitano

The death toll in Anchorage in the '64 quake, was low. However, the tsunami literally wiped a small village called - ironically - Hope, off of the map. The city of Kodiak was inundated. The whole villages of Cordova and Valdez were destroyed by the tsunami. I don't know how many were killed in Kodiak,  Cordova, and Valdez, but it was a lot. The cities were destroyed. When Valdez rebuilt, it was in a completely different location. Cordova also moved. Kodiak remains the most tsunami-vulnerable "big" city in Alaska. The '64 quake was a magnitude 9.2. That's slightly more than 100 times as strong as the 7.1 last Friday. Also, the epicenter of the '64 quake was offshore, which is what triggered the really large tsunami.

If one wants to read about a really BIG earthquake, (second largest in recorded history), researching into the '64 quake should satisfy that curiosity.

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

Jamie.270

I have an old friend whose house was flooded from that Anchorage quake tsunami back in '64.


In Crescent City California!  :eek:
QuoteRestrictive gun laws that leave good people helpless, don\'t have the power to render bad people harmless.

To believe otherwise is folly. --  Me

j0e_bl0ggs (deceased)

Turvey Stalking
Learn from the Limeys or the Canucks, or the Aussies, or the Kiwis, or the...
                   "The ONLY reason to register a firearm is for future confiscation - How can it serve ANY other purpose?"

gitano

Yup. Humans can be 'busy little beavers' when they want to be.

Lots of folks have been complaining about the aftershocks. I point out to he ones that complain to my face that without all of the little aftershocks to relieve the pressure gently, there is no other release than a BIG one. So while the aftershocks remind us of "the big one", without them, there will be another big one sooner.

Paul
Be nicer than necessary.

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