Having gone through the '89 Loma Prieta quake, I still can't get my brain around it:

[Shine]

10,000 dead in China. Those poor people....

:cry:


Let's send them some good energy tonite, it's the least we can do.


Hearing about that tragedy puts things a bit more in perspective, don't you think?

[CountAllVotes]

1. hey!

I was there too! It was SO scary!!!

I keep thinking of all of those poor people too!

It really is VERY upsetting to say the very least!

:(

:dem:

[ColbertWatcher]

2. I read an article after the devastating Turkey earthquake in 1999...

...that killed 17,000.

The article talked about how something like that could never happen in Los Angeles because we have building standards that are always updated.

In fact, the author (I couldn't find it) also mentioned the gas meter reader guy whose job it is to make regular checks for the automatic gas shut-off valve which became mandatory in California and levy fines against building owners who don't have one.

Sadly, the state of California under the GOP governor has slacked off on retrofitting hospitals to make them meet the latest earthquake standards.

This is one thing we can do: continue to make our buildings better, follow through with regular checks and hold people accountable when they cannot follow the new requirements.

[Retrograde]

3. This quake was much larger than Loma Prieta

Loma Prieta was "only" about a 7, this was a 7.8, about 8 times as large (the Richter scale is logarithmic, so a mag 5 quake is 10 times as strong as a mag 4 and so on.) And we got lucky with Loma Prieta, but even so it showed us that our seismic preparations weren't all as good as we thought.

I hope the survivors get the help they need, and quickly.

[Berry Cool]

4. It really is hard to conceive. n/t

[Regret My New Name]

5. I was in that quake myself, 7 years old at the time.

I agree that it's hard to wrap ones head around the huge number of people who lost their lives. That doesn't even take into account those whom survived but had their homes and everything else around destroyed.