Placentia Library Earthquake Damage

My apartment wasn't the only one that took a slight beating from yesterdays shake...take a look at what it did to the Placentia Library, which is about three miles from me! The library is currently closed until middle August while it it repaired.

Earthquake Pictures

Below are pictures from yesterdays Earthquake; it looks a lot prettier in the pictures then when it happened; the floor hours earlier was covered with pieces from the ceiling and wall. And this place is billed luxory lofts!

It's been standing for almost 100 years, so I guess something has to be giving it the support it needs.

The funny thing is all week long my wife and I have been saying "we really need to go to Home Depot and get Earthquake straps for the bookcases." We still haven't got them, but the bookcase were about the only thing that weren't swaying.

California Still Knows How to Rock and Roll

As probably most of you have heard by now, California had a 5.4 earthquake (5.8 depending on where you get your news) today. It was about 15 miles from my home in Anaheim (the Earthquake was centered in Chino Hills), which meant my place got taken for a bit of a ride. But all is now well--except for lunch, which I was not able to finish before the quake hit :-(

While Earthquakes are nothing new to me (one of my earliest childhood memories was waking up to the Whittier quake of 1987), this one was particularly fun because A.) it was the first one I got to feel with my wife, and B.) It was the first one I got to feel in a tall building. Our apartment was built in the 1920's, and is one of the tallest buildings in Anaheim; from out floor it felt like a drop and then a swinging sensation.

While the quake wasn't as bad as the '94 one (that was 6.7), it was enough to do a bit of structural damage to our place. The wall on the third floor stairwell is partially gone, and there is a hairline crack from about the fifth floor down. We also could not make or receive phone calls for about a hour.

Just to give you an idea of how stupid Californian's are, about ten minutes after the quake (while aftershocks were still happening), someone got in the elevator to get to their second floor apartment--people are so lazy here that they would rather get stuck in an elevator during an aftershock then walk one flight of stairs!

While our apartment was being inspected, we did what any other sane couple would do: we went to Costco!