Sunday, May 20, 2012
Milan earthquake (20 May 2012 4:05am)
My sleep has been sporadic. Heavy dozing before midnight then up at 3 to read and crash 5-9. While reading David Copperfield at 4:05 am, I heard a sound like creaking windows in a wind, but no wind. Then came a hard shove sideways of the bed that had me thinking someone was in the room, but nothing there. It was a magnitude 6 earthquake as reported in the popular press and by the USGS. My first EQ!! Every seismologist should go through one. Now I have. For the record, the strong motion was horizontal and (from orientation of my bed) first strong motion was along a 200 degree azimuth. There was no discernible vertical motion. My coordinates: 45°25'17.20" N 9°15'10.15" E (map)
My one and only felt earthquake
ReplyDeletewas right here in Denver. On
October 18, 1984 I was in my office
at Mines, and the experience was
of the room sort of going rubbery.
The students and I simultaneously
yelled "earthquake" and ran to
the seimograph. (At that time we
had a visible pen and ink drum
recorder in the main hall of
the Geophysics department.
After seeing the pen and in ink system thrown off scale. I ran
to the USGS building. This was
long before 9-11, so you could just walk in. The excitement of being "in the action" of the NEIC offices
during a relatively large local event was intoxicating.
I talked to news media because I was the go-to person for earthquake questions at that time. They got half of what I said wrong.