I live in Vallejo, which is (officially) 8 miles from the epicenter (American Canyon is just north of Vallejo). Only seemed to feel like about 4 seconds, but where I live, the house is built on solid ground, not fill.
Silicon Valley jolted by magnitude 6.1 quake – its biggest in 25 years
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook northern Californians out of bed today at 3.20am, shutting down power and wrecking homes in the state's wine country. The Sunday morning tremor was the biggest to hit the Bay Area since the destructive M6.9 quake in 1989. The epicenter of today's shallow quake was just a few miles from Napa, …
COMMENTS
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Sunday 24th August 2014 19:17 GMT Anonymous Coward
I feel for the grocery store workers and wine cellars
I worked my way through college during the period when we had the Loma Prieta quake and a somewhat smaller one down near San Martin in the southern Bay Area.
Earthquakes make a mess of anything placed on shelves, especially if it is in glass containers.
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Sunday 24th August 2014 20:58 GMT Old Used Programmer
People who haven't been through a local disaster may not realize that you're seeing the same damage pictures of the same places over and over again. Note the text on reports...*3* historic and *2* commercial buildings (brick structures in both cases...a construction method *known* to be unsafe in 'quakes) were damaged. The trailers *burned* because of ones unsecured to support blocks broke gas lines when they came off the blocks.
The damage is actually fairly minimal and quite localized.
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Sunday 24th August 2014 21:44 GMT MondoMan
Yes, and quite distant from what is normally considered "Silicon Valley". The 'rents, who live on the Midpeninsula in a single-story wood-framed house, were not awakened by it.
Hopefully, no touring bicyclists in Napa will be inconvenienced; then again, perhaps someone was filming a remake of View to a Kill...
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Sunday 24th August 2014 22:08 GMT noodle heimer
sod-all to do with Silly Valley
here in Oakland, we slept through the quake. Saw the news and checked the logging - 4 of 4 Vallejo locations online and no reported issues overnight. Not one call. One unmanned site lost house power for three hours. And that level of non-issue was 8 miles from the quake.
In Silly Valley they might have felt it, but jolted? really? I gather the author of this piece is a new arrival. he ought to read up on the Hayward fault which runs near his home in Oakland and is capable of very large motion. its proximity to bedrock means its tremors are less diminished with distance than many faults, and virtually all the drinking water feeding the mains in the east bay passes across it. We have a lot of water in three gallon jugs distributed in the house - enough for two dogs and three people for a bit, and more for our neighbors as I'd like them to have incentive to help.
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Monday 25th August 2014 00:11 GMT jake
Sonoma here, 8-10 miles from the epicenter.
I was actually awake (pulling meat out of the smokehouse, crush has started & I like to keep my fieldhands very, very gruntled). About half a minute of pretty good shaking, woke the wife & most of the dawgs. Lost PG&E power for about 6 hours, but that's what backup generators are for. No other damage. OK, to be truthful, I had three Green Zebra Cherry tomatos roll off the kitchen counter. I spotted two of them and picked them up. I stepped on the third ;-)
Gut feeling is that most of the quake's energy was deflected around Sonoma Valley by the roots of the Mayacamas Mountains. We won't be so lucky when Rogers Creek lets go ... "When, not If" is the mantra around here.
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Monday 25th August 2014 03:06 GMT Anonymous Coward
UPSes and surge protectors
"At least 30,000 homes were reportedly without power at one point."
To be fair to the earthquake, a lot of PG&E equipment is in a state of maintenance where a quick shower on a warm day will snap the rotting utility poles, burn up a rusty splice, or cause wires to sag into the path of vehicles. The outage page always looks like that.
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Monday 25th August 2014 06:30 GMT Anomalous Cowshed
outraged from Giggleswick
Dear Sir, Madman,
I am absolutely revulsed and distraught about the pictures showing broken bottles littering the floor and reports of tomatoes rolling off the kitchen counter. Are there no limits to the lengths you will go to turn people's suffering into salacious stories? You should be ashamed of yourselves. Fi!