Poet_Lariat: "5.8 ??? Back in Los Angeles we would have called that a speedbump."Okay, y'all need to make up your minds now.
luckynerd: "5.9 is pretty significant (says a native SoCali mefite). Glad y'all are okay. :)"
"The people you saw on the roof of the White House are members of the Secret Service Countersniper Team, which is composed of specially trained Uniformed Division officers. Their mission is to prevent any long-range threat to a protectee. They are trained with specially built weapons and other sophisticated equipment."posted by Plutor at 11:51 AM on August 23, 2011
It's a logarithmic scale.Poet_Lariat: "5.8 ??? Back in Los Angeles we would have called that a speedbump."zarq: "Okay, y'all need to make up your minds now."
luckynerd: "5.9 is pretty significant (says a native SoCali mefite). Glad y'all are okay. :)"
Tell_No_Lies: "That extra .1 is *huge*, man."
Evidently the quake occurred on a little known fault line outside of DC called "Bush's Fault".posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:35 PM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]
(Also, I think it’s important to remember that everyone who just experienced a big-shaker is coming down off a pretty big jolt of adrenaline, while anyone who missed it but has been through a similar quake is either jealous or feeling a kind of adrenaline flashback. It’s natural to want to debrief and to get defensive.)People who lived in California for any significant period of time get defensive when relatively minor earthquakes are treated like Big Deals (possibly because it reminds us how cavalier we are about our own quakes - how many of us simply aren't prepared for The Big One, because the possibility is frightening). People who experienced the quake are rightly defensive because to them, it is a unique experience.
OFFICIAL RESCUE TEAMS from the U.S. and other countries who have searched for trapped people in collapsed structures around the world, as well as emergency managers, researchers, and school safety advocates, all agree that "Drop, Cover, and Hold On" is the appropriate action to reduce injury and death during earthquakes. Methods like standing in a doorway, running outside, and "triangle of life" method are considered dangerous and are not recommended.FEMA Drop, Cover, and Hold Poster
" .... Two men dressed in Sesame Street costumes in Times Square didn’t feel it, either.posted by ericb at 1:40 PM on August 23, 2011 [14 favorites]
'I didn’t feel it, but I heard someone talking about it,' Elmo said.
Cookie Monster had no comment."
Is there somewhere to find out what the equivalent magnitude was at a certain place? I mean, I'm in Morristown, NJ, and it's by far the biggest one I've felt. But, for me, what was it? a 4? a 3? Anyone know how to find that out?I could easily be misinterpreting this, and even if I'm not this is obviously not exact, but it seems like 500 km from the epicenter (which Morristown, NJ is, approximately) would have been something like a 3.
"Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge."posted by ericb at 3:20 PM on August 25, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Jahaza at 11:09 AM on August 23, 2011