Originally Posted by
shipwreck
Lots of west coasters on some other comment sections on the net being pretty smug, saying things like no big deal, we get them every day...
I grew up about three miles from the San Andreas, and have gotten up in the morning with the bed a few inches from the wall. Yeah, you get used to it. But I bet that there would be some seriously soiled drawers if a city full of Southern Californians saw a funnel cloud coming at them, and folks doing things that were the equivalent of running out into the street in a quake.
Been in hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, near a couple tornadoes, every one of them frightening in thier way. All that can be done is pick up the peices, pick up your neighbor, hope everyone is ok, and don't ridicule someone who has never experienced something scary that you take for granted. So heres hopeing that everything is OK with everyone.
We get tornadoes here in SoCal, too. They aren't the massive CAT5 jobbies like the midwest and it isn't an annual occurence but we do get them. They usually come in off the Ocean and aren't big enough to last too long or do the terrible damage you see in "Tornado Alley" or elsewhere.
One (good) factoid - the building features you use to make a house hurricane-proof and tornado-proof are the same provisions you use to make a house earthquake-proof. I know many areas back east have implemnented mandatory hurricane reinforcement measures.
I think the real difference between here and there will end up being in the unreinforced masonry buildings. We have a few left standing but if it is a public building it has to be retrofitted with reinforcements. I know the east has lots of unreinforced, non-retrofitted buildings, so you may find damage in those out of proportion to the stick frame and steel framed buildings.
The other thing that differs is the geology. Easterners are all on one gigantic granite plate. When it rocks anywhere, it rocks everywhere (even 1,000 miles away). It is predicted that an 8.0 on the New Madrid, MO fault will be felt and may knock down buildings in Boston (most at risk are the unreinforced masonry buildings (bricks)).
California's plates are different and the quake's energy isn't transmitted over as wide an area. <-- that's good, right? The bad news for us is, our soils are much more sandy (which is what absorbs the quake's energy) but this leads to liquifaction. <--- that's BAD!