6.0 Earthquake Strikes Northern California; Your Humble Narrator Unscathed

Yes, I felt the earthquake in Northern California last night. We live about 60 miles south of the epicenter, and at about 3:20 AM, while I was in the bathroom getting ready for bed (yes, I tend to live Keith Richards-style hours), I noticed the glass shower doors had begun to vibrate together — and then the entire room began slide around for about 20 or 30 seconds, Inception-style.

And then it was over. Assuming you’re not at the epicenter of a major one, earthquakes in California are interesting phenomenon — usually less than a minute of actual activity, followed by hours and hours of talking heads on TV droning on about the topic, and asking vox populi-style questions to the man in the street whether he felt the quake, the sort of thing that Monty Python used to love parodying, 45 years ago. (“I’m not a man, silly!”, one woman would reply. “I’m not in the street, ya fairy!”, shouts a man working on his roof, etc.)

At 3:30 AM though, none of the local stations interrupted their late night infomercials; only one channel (the CBS affiliate, I believe) had put up a Chyron on top of the infomercial to report that a 6.1 magnitude earthquake had occurred. My wife put on KCBS, the local 24-hours news radio channel, in which the late night newsreader took calls from local residents on how severe it felt. But even they resumed prerecorded programming, if I’m remembering correctly, after about 20 minutes or so.

During which time, Twitter was certainly abuzz; I retweeted numerous earthquake-related tweets last night, as my timeline indicates. There was certainly some major local damage in the epicenter; this London Daily Mail article has several AP photos of a three story property in NAPA with some serious damage, and local shops had their inventories splattered across their floors. A mobile home park had a serious fire likely caused by a gas main break, and the Daily Mail reports that a local hospital has treated 89 people, “At least three injuries are described as ‘major.'”

But out here, 60 miles south, only some shaking was felt, thank God.

And in keeping with our recurring references to British-themed media, even the BBC inadvertently gets what it’s like living in California:

California separate nation “@BBCBreaking http://t.co/bs2cifttep pic.twitter.com/mQH8xONyL2”

— Kevin L’Estrange (@KevDyl) August 24, 2014

This debate is merely a matter of time:

Just woke up. Have they blamed fracking or global warming yet? #napaQuake — Chris Ar (@LBL72) August 24, 2014

And finally, exit question:

Has Don Lemon asked the tough questions yet? Was this an automatic or semi-automatic earthquake? Or was it caused by a black hole?

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) August 24, 2014

So yes, for those us not in the epicenter of the quake who are veterans of these sorts of things, the switchover from “ZOMG, EARTHQUAKE!!!!” To, “Well, the power is still on, and everyone’s OK,” to “Let’s laugh about surviving another one,” occurs pretty quickly. Apologies to those in the epicenter who suffered major losses; if you’re one of them reading this, hopefully you’ll understand that black humor is a coping mechanism.