EARTHQUAKE!

This is the worst I've experienced since coming to the States. I was putting Kayla to bed when I felt the bed move and pretty much the entire house shaking. For a moment, I thought this was it and it wasn't going to stop. Mikey rushed into the room, shouting "Earthquake", grabbed Kayla and we got out of the house right away... Let's just say I'm a little freaked out.

I'm totally convinced now that we need an earthquake emergency/preparedness plan of sorts. And I'm praying this isn't the precusor to the BIG earthquake that everyone says is long overdue.

From the Contra Costa Times
Magnitude-5.6 earthquake shakes San Francisco Bay area
By RON HARRIS Associated Press Writer

SAN JOSE, Calif.—A magnitude-5.6 earthquake shook the San Francisco Bay area Tuesday night, rattling homes and nerves, but there were no immediate reports of serious damage or injuries.

The moderate temblor struck shortly after 8 p.m., about 9 miles northeast of San Jose, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The shaking was widely felt within an 80-mile radius, as far away as Santa Rosa, Sacramento and Monterey.

The quake occurred on the southern end of the Calaveras fault, said Rafael Abreu, a geophysicist with the USGS' National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo. It was the strongest tremor in the Bay Area since 1989, when a magnitude-7.1 quake killed 62 people and caused nearly $6 billion in damage, according to the USGS.

The effects of Tuesday night's quake were considerably less dramatic than the Loma Prieta disaster.
Local and state authorities fielded a numbers of calls about gas leaks and broken water pipes, but there have been no reports of fires, widespread damage or serious injuries related to the quake.

"I hate to say it, but this one sort of seems like a non-event event," said Santa Clara County Sheriff's Sgt. Don Morrissey.

The epicenter was near Alum Rock, in the Diablo Range foothills east of San Jose—not far from the mayor's own home. Pictures fell off the walls of Reed's house, but he said there was no major damage there.

"It was a pretty strong ride here, a lot of shaking but nothing broken," Reed told The Associated Press in a phone interview from his home. "I've talked to a few people and we have no reports of injuries or damage. There was a lot of shaking, but it wasn't the big one."

Amrit Shergill, a night cashier at Alum Rock Shell gasoline station in San Jose, said there was no damage other than some small items that toppled off a shelf—but the intensity of the shaking sent her outside and crouching on the sidewalk.

"My God, I felt like running because the roof might come down on my head," said Shergill, who was born in India. "I've never felt anything like this in 16 years in the United States."

The USGS reported about a dozen aftershocks, the biggest with a preliminary magnitude of 2.1.
Rod Foo, a resident of south San Jose, about 10 miles from the epicenter, said everything in his house shook for several seconds, but the electricity never went out and his telephone was still working.

"I could hear it coming up the street before it hit the house," said Foo, a former reporter with the San Jose Mercury News. "It was rattling for a long time and really loud."

At Eastridge Mall in San Jose, employees reported chaos when the shaking began.
Donnie Moreno, 17, a retail store worker, said merchandise fell from the shelves, and one man ran into the store and pushed his child under some clothes.

"It was very scary," Moreno said. "Me and my manager, we're like, 'That's an earthquake. Everybody stay calm,' and it just started rumbling really bad. ... You could hear cracking in the mall."

Allison Guimard, 25, a technology executive who lives in Mountain View, about 18 miles west of the epicenter, said her china started shaking and she grabbed her dog. It was the first significant earthquake for Guimard and her husband, Pierre, who moved here from New York six months ago.

"It felt like the apartment was rolling—shaking and rolling," said Pierre Guimard, 25, a home entertainment installer. "Almost like a boat on the water."

Bay Area public transportation officials said Caltrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit trains halted for several minutes after the quake, then resumed at reduced speeds. There were no reports of injuries or damage to trains, officials said.
T
he 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck just before the third game of the World Series at Candlestick Park, was centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains on the San Andreas fault. The tremor collapsed a section of the Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge and left more than 12,000 people homeless.

In 2003, a magnitude-6.5 earthquake jolted the Central California coast, pitching an 1892 clock tower building onto the street and killing two people. In 2005, a magnitude-7.1 earthquake struck about 80 miles off the coast of Northern California, briefly prompting a tsunami warning from the Mexican border to British Columbia, but no damage or injuries were reported.

Scientists have warned for decades of an imminent major earthquake on the Hayward fault, which runs through the eastern Bay Area. But the southern end of the Calaveras fault is only capable of producing a temblor of a magnitude 6.4 or lower, said Tom Brocher, a USGS seismologist in Menlo Park.

"There wasn't any one big, strong wave or jolt—it was this rumbling, nothing else going on," Brocher said. "I knew right away this wasn't a big one."

Aaron McLear, a spokesman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said the state "will review and inspect all important infrastructure," including levees in the coming days.

Earthquakes powerful enough to be felt through the Central Valley have been of increasing concern since Hurricane Katrina because of their potential to weaken the earthen levees that channel rivers throughout the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.