EarthQuake

The earth shakes, and depending on the severity, nothing happens, windows crack, buildings fall down, or states fall into the ocean. The amount of fear an earthquake generates in someone is proportional to the severity and inversely proportional to the amount of the time they have lived in TheStateOfCalifornia?, or perhaps more interestingly (in the opinion of some, definitely more interestingly), in AlaskaUsa. Those older souls who have seen large subarctic estuaries (or larger arms of the ocean) repeatedly fill and drain while the earth dances for fiveish minutes might think that an EarthQuake is a thing properly feared. ProfessorEvans might also have some interesting comments on the EarthQuake, and its many utilities.

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Or how deep a sleeper they are. Silly earthquakes that happen at night so I sleep through them....

Earthquakes? Who needs 'em? I first heard about the one last semester when my mom woke me up to ask about it. Apparently it was a good one, and woke some people up on the second floor of East and other dorms. People on the ground floors (especially sound sleepers) really didn't notice.

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The quake during FallBreak? 1999 was interesting because there was a SleepOver? that night in the EastDormLounge, and we were in the middle of a group PurityTest (and some people playing a BoardGame?, etc.) when the shaking started.

Of course, it took everyone a while to realize what was happening. Everyone was sitting on mattresses or sofas, so most who felt the movement assumed that someone was bouncing their mattress. After it kept up for a while, MikeLane asked, "Wait a minute, everyone -- is that an EarthQuake?" MattBrubeck across the room had begun to suspect the same thing, and answered "Yes."

Some members of the student SearchAndRescue team who were present made sure that the EastDormLounge was evacuated. Everyone waited outside for several minutes, and when it became clear that the quake was over and hadn't caused significant damage, the lounge was re-occupied and the PurityTest resumed.

Later we learned that the quake was actually quite large, but centered out in the wilderness in the vicinity of JoshuaTree?. There were no fatalities, and the only significant injuries occured on an Amtrak train that derailed. Some of the other ClaremontColleges had some minor building damage. HarveyMuddCollege had almost none -- except for the widening of the crack in CrackSuite.

Just an idle taunt, an EarthQuake in AlaskaUsa once killed several citizens of TheStateOfCalifornia?, however, no similar act of earth from this long, dry, crowded state has ever killed so many denziens of AlaskaUsa.

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An earthquake occurred during the summer of 2010. I was up in the MicroPs lab, minding my own business, when everything started shaking- it felt like someone was moving unreasonably large machinery around, or some kind of experiment had just gone wrong in the Physics department. I didn't quite realize what was going on until ProfessorCha, like some kind of earthquake alarm, started sounding off from his office down the hall: "Earthquake! Earthquake! Earthquake!"

I stepped outside, and encountered ProfessorWang, who told us that he had been walking at the time, so he didn't feel the vibrations. He seemed disappointed. At this point, ProfessorCha had finally stopped shouting "Earthquake! Earthquake! Earthquake!"

Then ProfessorDMHarris stepped outside of his office, and announced: "I was under my desk!"

All in all, an exciting experience.