At 2:34 a.m. this morning, we were shaken awake by the biggest earthquake I have experienced since living in Humboldt County (which has been eleven years). There have been small earthquakes in this area over the years, but I haven't felt them!
Today's quake, which was charted as a 6.4 on the Richter scale with an epicenter just west of Ferndale, apparently made national news as we had many texts and e-mails from out-of-state relatives and friends checking on us today! The whole bed was shaking vigorously, it was LOUD, and I immediately knew what was happening (although earthquakes don't seem to freak me out as much as they do some people), even without the phone alert about the quake which sounded shortly after the shaking started. I had been in another big at least 7.3-or-so big earthquake in So Cal in the 90s; however, this one actually felt much stronger/longer.
We had some knickknacks fall off shelves and a few ornaments off the Christmas tree, and one computer monitor appears to be damaged, but nothing of consequence or anything structural in our house was broken (unfortunately, we heard of at least two deaths and quite a bit more building and road /water pipe damage near Fortuna and the Eel River Valley). The power went out for 70,000 county residents including us shortly after the earthquake and stayed off for about 15 hours (for us) until 6 p.m., although we had water in our town. There were apparently some small aftershocks (none felt by me). After the house stopped shaking, Kelvin retrieved our headlamps, electric lanterns and LED candles which we have stockpiled since the PG&E fire-related outages from a few years ago and which are put to good use.
The kids were really alarmed by the event (it was their first major quake, too!), and Niall took a couple of hours to settle back to sleep. "So that's why Papa doesn't want us to hang things over our bed," said harm-avoidant Iver. Due to no power/heat, their schools were closed so they hung out with us (Kelvin had to go into clinic and actually brought Iver with him for most of the day as he was extremely bored at home, but I was post-call and thankfully able to be home for entertainment for the little one). I couldn't get any reliable internet access at home and text service was spotty, but our cell phones seemed to work (which was not the case for local businesses). To make matters worse, we learned of some staff illnesses and family deaths causing more disruption in the call schedule in the next (holiday) week, which just increased the day's stress. Pepper the dog apparently didn't notice anything amiss during the quaking (but I know many pets also get freaked out by seismic events. She's blind and deaf but I imagine could feel things rumbling!).
I had to drive by Pepper's grooming place to confirm that they were (not unsurprisingly) closed and that her appointment was cancelled, since I couldn't reach them by phone.
In any case, there were a lot of arts and crafts, reading, mixing potions, and headlamps! I think Niall now understands how power works (he was having a hard time grasping why we didn't want to open the fridge, why the TV didn't work, etc...). We also talked about how many people in the world don't even have electricity at home!
There was a lot of catch-up work for me once we regained power, but the day itself was really not too terrible. We survived! Until the next one (this is Northern California, after all!) ...
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