What's going on here,

[Sailormilan2]

Last week I read an article that was talking about a Major Disaster seminar that FEMA put on around Aug of 2001. It dealt with 3 major disasters:

#1. A terrorist attack in NY

#2. A major hirricane hitting NO

#3. A major earthquake htiting Los Angeles.

 

Well, it seems that 2 out of three have hit. So, what happens here yesterday. Earthquake swarm about 30 miles south of Bakersfield. 2 feelable ones, and about 12 aftershocks.

Bakersfield is only about 40 miles from the section of the San Andreas fault that went off in 1857 with a 7.9 earthquake. Bakersfield, and its neighbor, Tehachapi, were heavily damged in the 1952 earthquake 7.5 magnitude.

These earthquakes yesterday are occurring on, or close to, the same fault that went off in 1952. So people around here are a little jittery right now.

Guess it is time to emulate Emul8 and fix me up a BOB and store some food stuffs up.

[Jimro]

There's no crystal ball for FEMA to foresee disasters other than history. NYC has been the target of more terrorist attacks than any other US city, no surprise there. Everbody knew that sufficient storm surge would flood the "Big Easy". California gets earthquakes all the time, everyone is just waiting for "The BIG One".

 

If something 7.5 or larger hits LA or San Diego again it's going to be bad, it always is. But the way I see it, California is a lot better prepared to deal with the aftermath than Louisiana was. California gets more practice.

 

Which is why if you live in South Carolina, you can pretty much laugh at natural disasters and terrorist attacks. Every summer a massive response exercise takes place around Ft. Bragg to keep the state/federal/local lines of communication properly lubed with familiarity. "A disaster is the last place you want to meet for the first time."

 

Jimro

[Emul8]

Yeah, I was talking with a friend on the phone when I felt the larger of those little quakes Thursday...it was pretty cool, but then again, I like earthquakes.

 

But don't emulate me entirely...I was 13 miles away from my BOB, and believe me, mere moments after the quake(s) occurred, I verbally kicked myself at the realization that my beautiful BOB was completely useless to me.

 

The funny thing is, I had NOTHING with me, even the usual travel-size BOB, since I just got some new gear bags to repack my modified BOBs in! I am going on a trip this weekend, and have started repacking my easily reachable BOB for the trip, but it was here at home too.

 

Had those quakes been really bad, I would have been in the same predicament as virtually everyone else...that was a sobering thought! So, Sailormilan2 people up there are jittery? That seems out of character considering that I've heard some folks up in the Bakersfield area refer to the region as "Bake-n-Shake"

 

I don't know Jimro, it seems that South Carolina is still just a little too vulnerable to hurricanes for me....