Have you ever been in an earthquake?

I'd been in LA a couple of months. I was driving west on Pico towards Santa Monica and I stopped at a light near the freeway. The right two wheels of my car were suddenly on the sidewalk. I'd never experienced such a thing, and told myself I'd imagined it. Yet there was my car, half on Pico and half on the sidewalk. It didn't occur to me what had happened until later that night, and I just felt grateful it hadn't been a proverbial big one.

October 17, 1989. Loma Prieta. I was in the east bay, a senior in high school. As a lifelong Californian, I'd felt plenty of little shakers before. This one was like nothing else before or since. And I hope it stays that way.

Once in Japan, twice in San Diego and twice in Philadelphia.

In Mexico City a couple years ago. The epicenter was closer to Acapulco, no major damage, but the ground definitely shifted and caused power outages. And it did freak me out - can't imagine what it's like to be in the middle of a really severe one.

I felt several other minor rumbles in Oaxaca and in Guatemala, of the bed-shaking variety. I'm not too keen on the idea of long term living in any earthquake zone now.

I read recently that scientists have discovered a hole in the ocean floor along the west coast and think Oregon could be at risk for a large quake.

In Brooklyn. I lived at the top of a 6 story building. I felt shaking. I heard cracking. I went out into the hall and onto the stairs. When I saw multiple people doing same it confirmed my suspicions.

I got to experience both the Loma Prieta and the Northridge earthquakes. The Loma Prieta was worse- I was working at Neiman's , and the building was built on rollers, which was mocked by a lot of architects at the time. I was on the ground floor, and the building swayed while my friend was trying to shove an old lady under a table. The building did not sustain any damage, save for all the house goods on the top floor smashed. When we exited the building, there was at least 3 inches of shattered glass covering the sidewalks and street from the windows of I. Magnin-they had all blown out.

Since I lived in Oakland, I had to stay in a friend's apartment in S.F. due to the Bay Bridge and Bart being closed down. My friend lived on a hill, and looking down at S.F. was eerie- completely dark, save for some fires happening here and there. When I came home, only a bookcase fell down.

For the Northridge earthquake, I was sleeping, and fairly away from the epicenter, so I didn't have any damage. However our neighborhood in West Hollywood was out of power for 3 days, which sucked.

Sylmar 1971

Whittier-Narrows 1987

Northridge 1994

And no, I don't freak out, or at least try not to. I do what we've been trained to do.

For the 1994 one, I had just gotten out of the shower and was standing in the bathroom totally naked .. lol. My main concern was getting the two dogs in the hallway. Partner was freaking out, though. He's not a native Californian.

And ex hook up of mine from Alabama was working construction in San Francisco during one of the earthquakes

He said he was in bed asleep and woke up as he was being slammed to the floor.

He said he thought someone had broke in to his hotel room and grabbed him and threw him in the floor.

The 1987 Whittier quake and the 1994 Northridge quake.

The Whittier quake happened shortly after 7:30 in the morning. I was working at a manufacturing company in a city right next to Whittier. We were in a production meeting when it hit. The warehouse was full of tall racks of heavy metal materials. As soon as the shaking stopped, we all ran out to the warehouse to see if any of the workers had been hurt. It was totally empty and quiet, and we realized that everybody was already outside in the parking lot. Nobody got hurt.

The thing I most remember was this woman, who was the company's co-safety director with me. She was a pretty large (fat) lady, and she was running out to her car, screaming "my children!!! my children!!!!". She left me to do all the dirty work while she high-tailed out of there to check on her rugrats. It was worth it, though, because I teased her about it for years after.

The Northridge quake happened really early in the morning on a Sunday, like 4AM or something. I used to spend a lot of weekends partying with my best friend and his family. They lived in the western San Gabriel Valley. I was sleeping on the sofa bed in the living room when the violent shaking woke me up. It was totally dark, and I heard this weird, eerie whispering sound all around me. It took me a while to realize what it was...it was the whole family praying. Not growing up in a religious household, I was taken aback that this was everybody's immediate reaction, rather than, say, checking on the kids.

Loma Prieta. It only last about 15 seconds but felt like much longer. Afterwards, watching the damage unfold on the news, I had to remind myself that all of that had happened in those 15 seconds when I was huddling in my dorm.

Three other only one of them lasted more than a couple seconds and they were all around 3 3.5 so nothing too terrible but they did leave me unsettled.

I grew up about 30 miles east of Los Angeles. I remember the 1992 Landers/Big Bear quakes, two major earthquakes that occurred within a couple of hours of each other. I was probably in 3rd grade at the time and the first quake was early enough in the morning where I was jostled awake by it and at some point ran to my parents' bed. I remember the swaying feeling that just went on and on and on for over a minute. I was still cowering in bed when the second quake hit. No damage, but it was scary.

A couple of years later during the 1994 Northridge quake, I had flipped around to being pretty nonplussed about it all. Same reaction with the 2008 Chino Hills quake, which was even closer to where I lived.

My very first one, yes, I absolutely freaked the fuck out. I’d been living in San Francisco roughly a year or so. It must have been 1979 or 1980. I was sitting in one of those wing chairs, wooden legs, on a hardwood floor. With my legs folded, lotus style. (I was young and flexy then.) The chair skipped a few inches across the floor. I shrieked. A piercing shriek. Scared myself more. My two roommates, both native Californians, cracked up. Couldn’t stop laughing.

I did get used to the quakes rather quickly. To the point of being (overly) blasé about them. In the ‘89 quake, I was teaching, we heard the earthquake alarm, did the duck-and-cover routine. I told the students to get back to work. They were screaming. Scared. I felt nothing. Took a while before I realized what was going on. That was Loma Prieta. Must have taken me about seven hours to get home (from the distant East Bay to Bernal Heights — via Marin!).

I still live at what was the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake. It was surreal. My most vivid memory is not of the fires, destruction and seemingly endless aftershocks. I will never forget what the dark sky looked like with no light pollution. It was as if someone dumped powdered sugar all over it. Absolutely stunning.

I was on a soccer pitch in Alameda California. A wave moved through the ground as if it were water. The telephone poles rocked back and forth the telephone wires becoming taught then slack.

All the lesbians in the greater LA area loved earthquakes, because it meant the seismic bulldyke herself, Dr. Kate Hutton of the California Institute of Technology, would be appearing on every TV station!

Yes.

Taichung, Taiwan, not far from the epicenter.

Yes and no. I was living on the fourth floor with a roommate that high on drugs, insisting it was nothing to worry about, just a hurricane, as all the furniture danced about the apartment, shit flew off the walls, etc. I grabbed her and ran into the streets in my underwear like everyone else, past midnight, calling my parents in the US to see if there was any news about it. Ha ha ha, no.

You could drive about the city later and see apartment building after apartment building that had multiple floors which had pancaked; homeless were living in parks in the city for a long time.

Any aftershock in the weeks that followed sent my heart rate to 180+. You could look at these huge plate glass windows of department stores shimmer and wobble like a scene from the Matrix. Super weird

Not a major one as of yet, but I live in Seattle which is basically a terrarium with hills, where the big one awaits - and husband and I were literally talking about this very subject within the last half hour.

R17, I always liked seeing her on TV— it was comforting somehow.

R15 For that one, I happened to be over the hill in Simi Valley. And when we went outside, we looked east over Rocky Peak, and it looked like this humongous powdery-pink dust cloud was hanging over the entire San Fernando Valley. ( Probably, that color because the sun was just coming up, as the quake hit at 4:30 AM.) Very eerie. And because there was no power, we had no news, so we weren't exactly sure where the epicenter was at that point, but we figured The Valley had been hit harder than us.

Felt my first earthquake in Palm Springs visiting last year. It was like a large gravel truck passing outside your window, and then you realize no truck is there.

There was a small earthquake in the Chicago area a few years ago. I remember half waking up to feeling something rumbling/shaking but went back to sleep when nothing happened. Thought it was a dream until I saw the news in the morning.

R17: We all loved Dr. Hutton, but by the 1990s, Dr. Lucy Jones had supplanted her as L.A.'s favorite "Earthquake Lady". I'm pretty sure it was this iconic image, following the Landers quake, that did it (or most certainly helped it along).

Jones & her husband -- who also worked for USGS -- had rushed to the USGS offices after the quake with their frightened (and sleepy) three year-old son in tow. Moments before the press conference began, her husband was pulled away to deal with some crisis (computer malfunction or something like that) and handed the boy off to her. She had no choice but to go on the air holding him. There was no one else to hand him off to (and he wasn't letting of her, anyway).

p.s. Dr. Jones (now retired from USGS) has great podcast called "Getting Through It". Highly recommend!!

In Montreal of all places. It was a 5.1 centered in update NY that woke us up in our hotel around 5AM. We assumed there were people in the next room banging on the walls. Went back to sleep and were shocked to hear about it on the news later that morning.

I was in Albany NY during the east coast earthquake in 2011 on the 21st floor of an office building that swayed—it was pretty freaky.

When I lived in San Diego, from 1996 to 2015, I felt a lot of earthquakes, though nothing serious. Seeing trees sway, with no wind. Feeling the bed move forward and back. Lying on a couch, watching a chandelier swing back and forth. Walking across a patio, feeling as if I was on a swaying ship.

But the most noticeable occurred on Sunday, January 9th, 1994, in the Shubert Theatre, as I was sitting in the mezzanine, watching Glenn Close sashay down a golden staircase, early in the matinee of “Sunset Boulevard.”

Suddenly, the whole theater started shaking.

It only lasted a few seconds, but the whole place went dead silent, and Close flattened herself against the wall. Immediately, everyone started talking. But Close, admirable trouper that she was, went right on with the scene, making them all shut up and pay attention.

It must have been a warning tremor, because the Northridge quake hit a week later, early on Monday, January 17th.

^ I should add I was in the Shubert Theatre up in L.A.

That wasn't an earthquake, R28, that was her middle C.

Those in Philly and Brooklyn must be talking about the quake that happened back in 2011.

I was in Philly for the great quake of 2011.

I grabbed a grocery bag and looted Club Body Center. Got all their poppers.

No, darn it.

for me, the closest is the 1974 film EARTHQUAKE in Sensurround.

R28: There were a few 3.0+ quakes off the coast of Santa Monica & Malibu in the week or so before Northridge.

R22 yes that's EXACTLY how I would describe it. Experienced a small one while visiting SF.