5.6 Earthquake in the Bay

Filed Under SF Bay Area on 2007-10-31, 11:34

Last night was an interesting evening. After meeting up with Rubin, Jake, and Audrey we headed to get sushi, only to find that BART was closed due to a suicide. Then during sushi at Miyabi, we thought we heard someone drop something in the kitchen. The sound was questioned, and we stopped eating to notice that the ground was kind of swaying. I looked up and saw the lights swinging from side to side. The other diners paused for a minute and you could see everyone waiting to see if things were going to subside or get worse. This was the first quake that I’ve been able to ask “Is this an earthquake?” instead of “Was that an earthquake?”. Being in the moment and realizing what was going on felt slightly more comforting. I even had a chance to flip open my Sidekick and send a Twitter message during the actual earthquake. Unfortunately for my “geek cred” Dan beat my to it by 4 seconds (I blame the Sidekick’s slow SMS sending).

Of course afterwards, we were all looking up info on the magnitude, watching the after shocks register, checking on friends, and deleting Twitters and IMs from just about everyone in the Bay Area. But everything is fine, very little to no damage around and as we waited for BART I noticed that the signs in the station said that there was an “earth tremor” and that trains were slightly delayed as tracks were being checked.

My favorite photo of the damage (as pointed out by s4xton) was this one:

Immediately after the 5.6 rumble, there were a number of after-shocks. These have continued through the night and today ranging in magnitude from 0.7 to 2.8. There are also forecasts of a 30% chance of an aftershock of 5 or greater. Hang on everyone!

image source: USGS by way of SFist