BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)

Subject: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 02:23 PM

Will we hear from robomatic? Emily? The quake is a significant 7.0 or more.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: maeve
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 02:44 PM

Updates here: https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/alaska-earthquake/index.html?adkey=bn

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 02:56 PM

The airport is open for departures but with no tower control and power outages are scattered.
Happy new moon.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: JennieG
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 03:02 PM

Scary stuff.....hope our Alaskan catters are all right.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: Donuel
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 03:08 PM

This was thousands of times LESS intense than the 1964 9.2 quake I remember. whew

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: Helen
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 03:47 PM

This article was in yesterday's online news in Oz. Interesting:

"Ghost" earthquake baffled scientists

Maybe there was some connection to the Anchorage quake.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 08:33 PM

Do you remember that old joke "Big John's Coming"? There's this old town in the old west, and young Ernie is the newest bartender. One day he's polishing the top when someon comes running thru the swinging doors yelling: "Big John's coming!" Instantly the girls run to their rooms, the card games split up their antes and people are running for the doors like multiple streams. Ernie is speechless. Nothing to say, nowhere to go. But in just a few minutes he's all alone in the saloon, still polishing the bar, and as far as he can tell, he's all alone in town.
Presently there is activity out in the street. A giant of a man is riding in on a buffalo, towing a bear by a rope. The man dismounts the buffalo, kicks it in the ribs, and yells "You stay here!"
He punches the bear in the jaw and yells "You stay here too!" He strides through the saloon gate, comes up to the bar and demands whiskey. This Ernie can provide.
And that's all the man wants. Soon he's talking, and Ernie is listening. Ernie chimes in. They have a nice little jibber jabber. The big guys doesn't seem so bad. But soon he makes a move to get off his stool and leave.
Ernie feels he's made a friend of sorts. A BIG friend. So he says: "What's your hurry? Why don't you hang around a little?"
"Whaddaya mean? Ain't you heared? Big John's coming!"


As I'm writing this I'm listening to Governor Walker's press conference. His notable quote: "This one had a bite to it. It was not comfortable." More on this later.

My earthquake: I was reading in bed at 8:30 AM. With no preamble the house and I began shaking. The shakes didn't start gentle, and they got worse. Felt like being in a mixer. I'd had some conversations about what to do if this situation happened again and they settled on 'stay in your room' but the lower floor bedroom I'm in is underneath the part of the roof supported with big heavy beams, and if it got worse I had a caution in my mind as to whether if those big heavy roof beams got loose would they penetrated the floor over my head, so I moved into the stairwell and hung on to the wall corners there. The sounds were mainly the sounds of stuff sliding and falling. You're just able to do so much and the only significant thing that you will do is endure until God or nature or Nature's God is through with you. Well, it took about a minute to be through with us, tapering to some long seconds of minor vibrating, mainly the chattering of the lightweight inside door to the furnace room.

Then I called my family. The old style phone service was up, as was my internet, but who knows for how long, so a quick message out so folks who might worry, won't.
Parts of the house were difficult to get across. Stuff that was on bookshelves, tables, and in the kitchen cabinets, were now piles on rug and flagstone and linoleum.
About an hour after the quake I opened the front door and headed out. I could hear car alarms but the fact that the street lights were still on and people's houses were showing inside lights was relieving. I went out to the car and started it up and drove around a little. The middle school across the street from me was letting its students out and there were long lines of cars, headlights burning in the morning dark, rolling in a steady slow stream to pick up their young ones. I made it out to Starbucks but that part of town, where Target and Cabela's and Smashburger are, was without electric power and shut down. No problem driving home. The main street light was out of power but folks were treating it as a 4 way stop and behaving themselves, which is what we expect in Anchorage.
I have some retired friends in walking distance, we usually gather at Starbucks, but they invited me over and they have some high quality coffee and they got me pleasantly caffeinated while we exchanged information. Their dog was terrified, as are cats and dogs around town. Their house has a characteristic that in the living room the aftershocks are very perceptible, but the garage much less so. So they put their very nice dog in their wagon in the garage. My cell phone was intermittent, but is up at present.

This was definitely the strongest shaker I've experienced since moving here. And I've been through some shakers.

The airport was closed.
Hospitals are running but scheduled surgeries are changing.
Schools are closed through this Tuesday. There will be structural inspections to clear them.
As many as 20,000 folks lost power. It is down to 1,300 as I type this Friday midafternoon.
The fire department had three fires to deal with, likely earthquake related as they usually have one per day.
Apparently some water mains downtown have cracked. Anchorage Water & Waste has recommended as a safety measure boiling tap water for drinking.

A highway ramp collapsed, it was a case of soil/gravel/grade degradation, a sinkhole style collapse, not a concrete structure collapse. That's just a couple of miles from here. We've had some reports of an overpass with cracks in it north of town and some authorities have restricted traffic. South of town a lot of rocks landed on the Seward Highway but I've heard they have been cleared.
Apparently these level earthquakes are not uncommon around Alaska. What makes this memorable is that we were close to this one.
The Mayor had a press conference with the Chiefs of Police and Fire Depts. So far as we can tell, there are some minor injuries and no deaths. There is some infrastructure damage which is still being assessed. About an hour later the Governor had a press conference and seemed satisfied with the Federal response including calls from the President and his office.
Me. I've got a lot of stuff to get off the floor. I'm not necessarily going to boil water, but I've got a lot of pre-bottled water (that I've bottled).
I'm greatful that I've got plumbing, the heat is on and the lights are on.
What keeps me and some other folks sober is to remember that today's earthquake was a 7. The big one from '64 was a 9.1. That's a hundred times the energy release of today. Today the heavy movements were over thirty seconds. Back on Good Friday '64 it was five minutes LONGER.
My gut tells me that life will go on quite normally from here with a lot of money being spent in the background on inspections and infrastructure repairs.

BIG JOHN IS COMING.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: JennieG
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 10:04 PM

Good to hear you are OK, Rob.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: robomatic
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 11:05 PM

Thanks, Jennie

Ka Mate! Ka Mate! Ka ora! Ka ora!

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 30 Nov 18 - 11:17 PM

Robomatic, thank you. I, too, am glad you are okay.

Seems like at least one other 'Catter is up there somewhere. Is it Ebbie?

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 01:05 AM

I think you're right but I don't know where in AK Ebbie resides, and I haven't read from Ebbie lately.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: maeve
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 08:30 AM

Ebbie is a couple of hours' distance from the earthquake area. What about KT?

Glad you're OK, robomatic. I prefer Ka ora! Ka ora!

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: leeneia
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 02:26 PM

So far there seem to be no fatalities, not even any serious injuries. How fortunate, because a 7 is a big quake.

CNN shows a highway in terrible shape. It's going to take a lot of money and effort to repair the effects of this quake.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Dec 18 - 04:43 PM

There are a couple of bad bits of road which have made the universal photographs. And rocks falling on the road south of town. But overall people know how lucky we all were. No big injuries, diversified infrastructure damages which may even be good for the economy, and I just got back from Costco with fresh AA batteries for my LED headlamp.

The downside is that there are sharp little aftershocks. For me, just as I was about to slumber.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: leeneia
Date: 02 Dec 18 - 06:45 PM

Are people okay, given that it's December? Do you have water, power and heat?

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: robomatic
Date: 02 Dec 18 - 07:39 PM

leeneia (Is that how to address you?)

Life is 99% normal. Power is 99% on. No major injuries. Stores had some major cleanup to do but it's mostly done. Even my local supermarket had a fire pipe release of water on top of all the breakage but they're open today.

The biggest overall penalty was that the local waterboard recommended people boil water. This was being very cautious. So all the coffee shops in town, including Starbucks, closed for a day until they could flush their pipes. I'm tellin' ya it was absolute hell having to use instant coffee and kitchen counter espresso machines instead of the drive throughs, but, dammit, somehow we held on!

Road crews are already working on the major on-ramp collapse because it's a major access point to the airport.

I heard that Costco allowed non-members to shop, but I haven't confirmed it since I'm a member.

You can check out the Anchorage Daily News at adn.com. Some nice stories and links from there.

We are supposed to be getting alternating snow and rain this week. No one is happy about that but at least it held off during the immediate 48 hours post-quake.

So we're feeling pretty relieved and lucky and thankful. Dogs and cats are still freaking out, because there are scores of mini-shocks going on that are perceptible to them but less so to the two legged critters. The two legged critters vary a great deal. When I'm not being jerked around I'm damn near blase, but some folks I know are only marginally better than the pets. I've no idea how the moose and wolves feel, and I don't know if the bears woke up (but I expect they did).

Good building codes. Good local services. Good civilian attitudes.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: Donuel
Date: 03 Dec 18 - 09:13 AM

That sounds well and good but it remains that you are in the most seismically active region in the US. So you are right, Big John is coming.

Did you see Helen's find of the recent slow ghost quake on the opposite side of globe from you?
Combine this data with any perturbance of our magnetic field and we might find a very deep molten disturbance.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Dec 18 - 07:52 PM

KT & Ebbie are in Juneau... about 600 miles from the quake. Both have popped in on FB to say they are fine

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: maeve
Date: 03 Dec 18 - 10:16 PM

Thank you, Bill D.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: ChanteyLass
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 09:26 AM

Yes, thank you.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Dec 18 - 06:51 PM

She has a beautiful view of the sheltered waterway that has fishing boats and cruise ships alike.

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: leeneia
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 01:11 AM

Robomatic, thank you for your report. You Alaskans must be tough!

Subject: RE: BS: Anchorage Alaska quake (30 Nov 2018)
From: robomatic
Date: 07 Dec 18 - 02:25 PM

Some are tough. But what really counts is people who are willing to work together on common time and freak out on their own time.

Couple more things:
There really has been a lot of damage as far as insurance purposes go. First, we've closed the schools down for the week while they get inspected and some schools are not going to reopen for the remainder of the school year.

Pretty much all stores have reopened by now and I've talked to several store workers. Tons of stuff was swept up and returned and in the case of big box stores, when things like boxed up flat screen TVs fell over, they were basically considered junk. Because, though there's every likelihood they will be OK, there's the chance they are not and a customer will be unhappy and want to know if it could be earthquake damaged. It is not worth while to unbox, test and rebox, hence it goes back (or to the dump).

None of that means for one instant that we don't smile and celebrate that no one died or was even seriously injured. And no big fires and public services brought down. It is important to realize just HOW BAD it can be such as those from Paradise CA have experienced.

But on a human level, we're still here and now we're going back to work and hanging out at Starbucks and it's mainly the many many aftershocksthat remind us we even had a big ol' shaker just a week ago.