Shake, rattle and roll in Nor Cal
May 23, 2013
By Katy Grimes
Earthquake! Tonight in Sacramento, we felt the rumblings of a 5.7 earthquake centered in in Greenville, CA, in Plumas County — 300 miles from Sacramento.
This is considered a moderate earthquake. So far, there have been 13 small aftershocks reported.
This is a rare occurrence in Sacramento; we normally don’t feel the seismic activity in the state.
Within moments, friends on Facebook were posting about it. It only took two minutes for an insurance agent to encourage everyone to buy earthquake insurance.
One of my good friends said she was glad her wine did not spill.
Fortunately, it appears that the only damage may to be a few broken pictures. But local television news channels are acting as if Hurricane Sandy just swept through the north state. Local news shows have taken over all network programing, interrupting regular shows, blathering on and on about nothing. One station interviewed the same two college girls over and over again — one girl felt it, the other did not. Wow.
The 24-hour news cycle is bad — they are desperate to find a disaster. Local news stations have been taking phone calls from Greenville, Susanville, and Chester, CA residents who are reporting the broken pictures. One station sent out a reporter to interview local people who felt the tremor. Most people didn’t feel it. But the news people are behaving as if it’s the Loma Prieta Earthquake.
The news people are even interviewing each other about what they felt.
Greenville residents reported walls shook, tables moved, “trinkets have fallen off shelves…” and my hanging pots and pans clanged. Some Greenville residents had minor damage, but remember the area is near Mount Lassen, a dormant volcano. Anything could happen.
Potential damage — “moderate” according to the United States Geological Survey.
My favorite Facebook comment was Harmeet Kaur Dhillon in San Francisco: “Quitcherbellyachin’ people. 5.7 is peanuts.”
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58 yrs. in California and I have yet to feel an earthquake. Somewhat disappointing.
Larry if you really want to feel and earthquake you need to visit and spend a couple days in Parkfield, over around Bishop (Long Valley Caldera area) or in Hollister. In those areas little shakers, like 3.0s are so common they barely make the news.
Well Larry you should consider yourself lucky……..$140,000 worth of structural damage, without a house for a year, loss of kid going to college, loss of job for kid, loss of job for 6 months……..94 quake in Northridge…….you really want to experience that?
You’ll feel it in Sacramento when the big one hits in the Bay Area. You’ll pay for it too.
According to George Ure at Urbansurvival.com and Clif High at HalfPastHuman.com a Global Coastal Event is due for this weekend on the West Coast, specifically around 2pm Saturday. I guess we shall see.
This one was noteworthy, if for no other reason it is in one of the least seismically active parts of California (The far north and northeast).
The Central Valley has low activity as well, but will sometimes feel shaking from strong events along the San Andreas fault zone.
Hey Katy Grimes— love the ‘tongue in cheek’ approach to the article… and the picture… HA! The media questioning each other, really broke me up! They should hop a plane and go to DC and cover a scandal or something….
Be thankful we don’t have another 7.0-8.0 earthquake…
It will come in due time. The nature of our geology. Until then, let’s hope it’s NOT Saturday at 2pm, like Nancy says in the post above… CC, Napa