I lived in Guam in 1993 and we had a 8.1 earthquake that lasted nearly a minute. I remember sitting on the couch and just before the rolling started it indeed did sound like a freight train. Just as I stood up to figure out what the sounds was, the whole house was rolling and shaking. My husband and I grabbed the kids from their rooms and went into a closet that was supported by 3 main walls. We were with out power for several days and without water for at least a week. It was so scary!
I've been in hurricanes on the east coast, tornados in Texas and a Typhoon in Okinawa, That was my first earthquake and by far the most terrifying of all the others combined.
Holy mackerel! You've been through a LOT! Surprised to hear that quakes are at the top of your list of disasters to avoid.
What kind of construction were you living in when the 8.1 struck? I think it makes all the difference in the world.
In LA and Japan where we have lots of them buildings are built to earthquake standards and, by and large, make it through 4 and 5 and 6 point events. In the Middle East and Asia where they have masonary 2 and 3 story buildings that aren't built to earthquake standards they have massive trauma and horrifying loss of lives with 3 point quakes. Generally, wood construction and 1 story buildings do well in large quakes. And when they have damage they don't present the same falling danger.
In the Northridge quake we were in a 1 story California ranch that had huge wood rafters. One of them cracked open and you could see the twisting that the torque of the quake caused. But when we had our repairs done an engineer said we could just fortify it with decorative iron braces. When it was done it was a cool part of the history of the house and SoCal preserved.
We loved that house and we were happy there. We would have stayed forever until the
1997 shoot out at the Bank of America. It was one of the first mass murder shoot outs in the country but everyone's forgotten about it now. It was about a mile from our house. The gun store where the LAPD were equipping themselves with automatic weapons to counter the armory the bank robbers were walking down the street shooting was our back fence neighbor. That was far scarier than the earthquake and why we sold our house and moved on.
Funny what happens in a lifetime, isn't it? Who could anticipate any of it? But I think anything we can sit down and relate to others is, basically, an E ticket ride! (Glad I've finally got that right!)
It hit ~7:30AM... I was brushing teeth when it hit.... I ran down the hall and out the front door as we lived on a cul-de-sac off Victoria Blvd & I wanted to see what Victoria was looking like...... It was a long quake and I got to see the 5 lane wide Blvd roll like the bottom of a river. Power poles swaying like sbamboo in the wind. It was so awe inspiring.....
