Seismic Disturbance

Well, we’re back. I’ve been meaning to resurrect this blog for some time, starting ohhh… about a year ago. Actually living life seems to get in the way of blogging about it however, but I finally decided that there is never going to be a “good” time to sit down and create updates, and that I will just create blog posts here and there as I can. There certainly is plenty for my family to blog about though- these pages are stagnant not for lack of news.

It is interesting that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube seem to have supplied the “connected” among us with a sort of immediate gratification in posting pictures, videos, web links, and snippets of personal news. These are great tools, but there is something lacking in the abrupt and constantly shifting nature of these services. Blog posts seem like a better method of going into a topic in more detail, even if it takes a little bit more effort and the audience is smaller. (Though I am still a huge proponent of using an RSS feed, such as Google Reader for those of you with Google accounts, to monitor blogs and other web pages).

So of course the big news this week is the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck South of Mexicali on Easter Sunday. Judi, Annemieke, and I all felt it in San Diego. Judi had a rude awakening from her nap, and Mieke and I were sitting at the computer when it struck. It was the strongest earthquake I have felt in San Diego in the 10.5 years I have lived here, and was the strongest I’ve felt since I lived in the Imperial Valley (which is where the epicenter was, on the Mexico side). It lasted for quite some time, and the building swayed a great deal and creaked and popped. Nothing appeared to have fallen over, and there was no damage. A series of aftershocks followed, several of which we felt through last night.

My family was actually headed back to Brawley from visiting us in San Diego when the earthquake struck (Brawley being not too far North of the epicenter, along the same San Andreas fault complex). They had almost arrived back in Brawley when the earthquake struck, having just gone down Carter road three minutes before the event. The image below shows Carter road in the immediate aftermath of the quake- note the main canal on the right overflowed its dirt banks, and flooded the road with water and mud. That spot is where my family was driving three minutes before the quake. Their house was tussled some, but there was no major damage, although apparently some streets in Brawley were flooded with water from all of the swimming pools that overflowed. My uncle Joe, 20 miles closer to the epicenter, reported that the water came out of his pool higher than a person “like a tidal wave”.