Earthquake!

By | December 20, 2006

Not a huge quake, but it was pretty close to us. The preliminary USGS report says it was a 3.7 at 7:12 pm 2 miles ESE of Berkeley. The epicenter was very close to the Claremont hotel in Oakland.

I felt a couple of thumps over about 2 seconds. There was one relatively strong thump and a couple of mild ones. The only damage we know of so far at our house was one cookie sliding off a cookie sheet in the oven.
I filled out the USGS survey indicating how strong the shaking was at my house. The Community Internet Intensity Map for this quake is available online.

A friend who was still at the office in Alameda IM’d me immediately to ask if I also felt the quake. My wife called KALX and they didn’t feel anything there, even though they are much closer to the epicenter. Of course, the radio station is in the basement of a building on which a ton of money was spent on seismic retrofitting.

Given how minor the quake was, I don’t think the seismic work we had done on our house this summer made much of a difference, but I’m still very happy to have had the work done.

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