What I Learned Today

Today I discovered that the USGS provides KML feeds for Google Earth that will show you, in real-time, the latest earthquakes that have been detected. (Well, with a 5-minute delay.) This came in super handy at work just after the 5.4-magnitude earthquake hit Chino Hills and rolled through the ground under our office building. I’m on the fourth floor. At about 11:45 a.m., I noticed a sort of rocking feeling, and then the blinds started to smack into the windows, and then I headed for the interior doorframe. My grad student intern dove under her desk. Our administrative assistant joined me in the doorway and remarked, “It’s too late in the day for an earthquake! Usually they wake you up in the morning.” We all marveled and held our breaths until the shifting and rattling stopped. One co-worker was in the restroom when it happened and said that the sound of all the water sloshing around in the pipes was pretty “unusual.” Overall, though, nothing broken and no injuries. It was the strongest earthquake I’ve felt since moving here in late 2003.

Once things had stopped, everyone jumped on their computers to look up where it had happened and what the magnitude was. Chino Hills is about 30 miles away. I guess for people closer to the epicenter, things actually fell off shelves. But from a purely geeky perspective, it was lots of fun watching all of the aftershocks being reported in Google Earth. We couldn’t feel any of them (ranged from magnitude 1.2 to 3.4), but they just kept rolling in. The Earth is a mighty sleeping giant… and even a tiny twitch amid all that slumber serves as a firm reminder.