Via Southern California Earthquake Data Center
On Monday a 4.0 earthquake centered in Piedmont hit at 6:49am. It only lasted a couple of seconds and wasn’t that powerful, but my young kids, having never experienced an earthquake of this magnitude, came running over to my office with worried looks on their faces. They had no idea what was going on. Having experienced the 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake back in 1989 in Santa Cruz, as well as several not quite-as-big ones in Japan in the 90’s, I knew it could have been far worse.
I’ve been thinking about retrofitting the foundation but having talked this over with several engineers, they don’t think it’s necessary for my one story house built in the 60’s. What have you done to prepare for the “big one”? Do you have earthquake insurance or an earthquake kit? Anything else? Or are there more important things to worry about?