I've lived in Huntington Beach for a year and felt several minor quakes or shakes at various times. I never got used to them, and found I felt them more frequently than many of the regulars or locals. As we were discussing whether to move back to the midwest to follow my wife's graduate studies, we had a little shake. I was home for lunch, and she was bent over the kitchen sink when she says "It bucked me!" We sat on the couch eating and I said, so what do you think, should we go? The earth shook again with the same strength at that moment, and we concluded it was a sign. So, we gave noticed and moved about a month later. That was August 1989. About two months later, in October 1989, I was driving in the rain in SE Ohio when I heard the quake in Candlestick Park had stopped the game. My first thought was, "I beat the odds... we got out in time...."
For those who want to know what one feels like, you know that startled feeling you get when you're dropping off to sleep, and you jerk so badly that you wake yourself up? That's sorta like it. But I would say when you lean back in the Lazy Boy chair and are relaxing, and then someone walks by and bumps your chair, and you think for a second that you're going to go over backwards... that's more what its like...you loose your stability and center of balance for a moment.
When we were in Hawaii October 2006, a 7.1 struck ten miles away, and that shaking was different in P waves, S waves and T waves...all had a different feel of shake, roll or direction of shake to them...and the whole thing lasted 45 seconds. Then, 7 minutes later, a weaker one struck for about a half a minute as well. That was the biggest I've been through. Our hotel room looked like a mess, but we straighted it up without problem. Thank goodness the TV was bolted down. The ash trays and ironing board fell down and most of the grout in the bathtub shower fell out into the tub. One lamp fell over and ripped the shade, but otherwise, it was just cosmetic. Thank goodness. That was the wildest ride outside of Disneyland that I had ever had...but now I remember it as the high point of our week's vacation!
