Everyone in my family is ok. Lots of damage, but just "stuff". I'll post more once the dust settles.
Paul
Whew!
I'm glad you and the wife are okay. You're right,...
Stuff is just stuff. But I thought about the Music Stand getting something heavy like a bookcase dropped on it, and worried about it too.
I've been in a few "shakers" and they're not pleasant by any means. But nothing even approaching a 7+. That's nutz.
Good luck with the cleanup, I hope you folks didn't lose too much.
Keep us posted when you can.
Most things back to normal as much as can be under the circumstances. Bad damage to the transportation infrastructure. You'll probably see the more dramatic pictures on national TV. Power was off at my place for about 8 hours. I have a generator connected to run the essentials in the house: well pump, boiler, and kitchen including refer and stove, etc.
Lots of damage to 'stuff' in my house. 5 'stuffed heads' came off of the wall. Two of them were severely damaged, the other three not at all. Without going into all the little things let me just say, "It could have been much worse". As I was cleaning up, I was repeatedly thinking "Wow! It's amazing what DIDN'T get broken!"
Anyway, all's well so far. There have been 14 aftershocks greater than magnitude 4.0, but there is no expectation of any aftershock near the magnitude of the original (7.1). I think everything will be back to "normal" in a day or two. All of me and mine are just fine. "Stuff" lost is just stuff lost. That's what happens to 'stuff' in the end anyway.
Thanks for your prayers and concerns!
Paul
Paul, good to hear you'ns are ok & no major "stuff" lost. I didn't know anything about the quake till this morning when I read it on the computer. TV news is mostly "out" for me because I can't hear & understand much. Hang in there, pal. Prayers for you, Sue & the girls. .......Paul H
That's good news Paul. I went through one as a youngster in Japan in 1957 and it's still etched on my mind. You wouldn't think that a little gliding of Earth's tectonic plates wouldn't amount to such a mess on top but it sure does! Take a look at Japan on the chart.....it sits at the intersection of four of them!!
I thought maybe you had an incipient case head separation . . .
RJ
Quote from: recoil junky;152063I thought maybe you had an incipient case head separation . . .
RJ
:MOGRIN:That's the funniest comment I have heard since this whole thing started! :MOGRIN:
Thanks for all the well-wishes and prayers! Most everyone is pretty much laughing it off by now. (Funny how human psyches work that way.)
The worst damage, (not counting the pretty-much-destroyed pronghorn head), was to one of our cars -
the one in the garage. Things - "garage things" - fell on it and cracked the windshield, broke a side window and put a dent in the roof. Not sure how insurance is gonna work for that. You can NOT even buy "earthquake" insurance for your house in Alaska. (Funny how THAT works, isn't it.) I'm wondering if USAA will claim "no coverage for earthquakes" or "act of God" to weasel out of financial responsibility. I'd be a little surprised. USAA has been
pretty good so far. No "help" from homeowners insurance. No protection from damage from earthquake.
Thanks again for your prayers and well-wishes!
Paul
Don't count on USAA....they have change to Big Business model and getting worse by the day.
Funny picture of earthquakes around the world and the recent one in Anchorage.
Paul
Glad you guys are ok Paul.
Well, Jorge, EVERYBODY is OK! No injuries reported AT ALL!
Of course the Press just HAD to find something "dangerous" to report, so last night on the nightly local news they reported that "Some of the incidences - like heart attacks - that occurred at local hospitals MIGHT have been caused by anxiety over the earthquake".
It is really difficult to imagine how the people of the Press today look at themselves in the mirror! I know... I know... The Truth is; they have sold their souls. And I mean that. No hyperbole. No exaggeration. The Press, as a whole, is truly an agent of Evil. Today, they are simply incapable of telling the Truth. They simply CAN'T.
Paul
Amen to that Paul.
No integrity in the media.
I'm glad I'm not the only one.
AFAIC, the mainstream media has been the enemy of the American people since before the turn of the century.
I thought it might be unique to our society/culture/government, but apparently not.
The "media" we know today & ever since WW2 is our worst enemy. They don't report the real "news" bot tell you just what they want you to hear or see. They may show some news on a marquee scrolling along the bottom of your TV screen in fine print at high speed while they're running their mouth about some "celebrity" doing something stupid. The media also sensationalizes even the most trivial thing to milk it for all they can get out of it. One only has to look at who owns most of the media outlets to figure out why they're so pathetic any more. I'll drop it before I really get stared. .......Paul H
Had some 'chaos' in the reloading room:
(https://i.postimg.cc/fWf9dxDX/GR-2s.jpg)
But it could have been worse:
(https://i.postimg.cc/jdqJ4LS1/GR-1s.jpg)
As you can see, not a single powder container came off the shelves.
Getting all of the spilled bullets back in the right boxes was tedious, but not as bad as I thought it would be. Getting all of the boxes of bullets on the shelves straightened up and getting all of the boxes not on shelves back on the shelves is actually more 'involved'.
Most of my rifles are 'strapped in', and while they moved a bit from side to side, they stayed pretty much in place. However, I have several milsurps that were not strapped in, and 4 of them fell from their perches. Fortunately (again!), no damage to them or what they fell on, on the countertop below.
One thing I have learned the 'hard way' after all this is "Open cabinet doors very carefully!" :D
Paul
How much stuff did you find that you didn't know you had??:laugh:
SOME! :D:D:D:D:D
Paul
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
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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
I have an old friend whose house was flooded from that Anchorage quake tsunami back in '64.
In Crescent City California! :eek:
(https://gab.com/media/image/bq-5c0970a653d25.png)
(https://gab.com/media/image/bq-5c0970a875e8a.jpeg)
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
Yeah, I`d take those itty bitty one on a continual basis.
Quote from: j0e_bl0ggs;152150(https://gab.com/media/image/bq-5c0970a653d25.png)
(https://gab.com/media/image/bq-5c0970a875e8a.jpeg)
Yup, and the other one that made the news the most and closest to my place (5 miles) - "Vine Avenue" - is also completely repaired.
Paul