Rockin’ And Rollin’ At Noon…
A 5.4 quake hit today at 11:42, centered in Chino Hills. I was in my loft on 9th floor, with housecleaner and White Dog. I felt it first- kind of like someone walking heavily across the floor, as I looked at housecleaner, realizing the concrete floors were not moving because of her 100 lb. foot steps. Then the noise began- it was loud, as all the windows were violently rattling- I really thought one would blow out. Isis was doing her high-pitched yelping (surprisingly, she was sleeping up until the noise- she didn’t have the “premonition” that animals so often have). The housecleaner, Madeline, was a little scared being high-up, but knew to get under doorway to bathroom (actually, that is probably not much help as it was constructed fairly weakly compared with rest of building- I just stayed away from windows, near interior wall).
I actually like earthquakes- I’ve been through quite a few, including Northridge 6.9 in 1994 that totalled the St. Vibriana’s Cathedral next to Higgins and made the Catholic Diocese move out. The Higgins building whethered that quake just fine, as it was built from day 1 to withstand large quakes, and I kept telling myself that as I endured the approximately 40 sec of rolling.
It was interesting watching the workers at LAPD HQ stream out of that building- they all assembled outside, and I after a wait for aftershocks (we felt none here), I could here someone on a bull horn telling workers to go inside and get their stuff and go home for day.
This was a blessing- at about 12:15pm I took White Dog for a walk (she was still high-strung and running around and needed to blow off some steam). It was very eerily quiet out for a weekday- perfect! I spoke with front desk guy and he said all the damage in Higgins that he knew of was some plaster came off the wall in a unit on 10th floor. In greater LA, I have not heard of any major damage (there’s probably the normal heart attacks, etc). All in all, no harm, no foul, and it’s back to normal. What a great E-Ticket ride!