"Yes, I heard it."
"What was it?"
"You ought to know honey.....we've only been through about a thousand of them, most stronger than that."
We went back to sleep. I've experienced the:
- 1971 6.6 Sylmar quake (magnitude 6.6)—I was about 10 miles from the epicenter. It shook so hard it nearly brought down the house I was in. It shook for 59 seconds. When I ran outside, I could see the shockwaves traveling through the ground at me, just like waves on a big lake. They knocked me over.
- 1983 Coalinga quake (magnitude 6.5)—I was about 100 miles away, but still got a lot of shaking.
- 1987 Whittier Narrows quake (magnitude 5.9—while I was driving at freeway speeds, about 2 miles from the epicenter, on my way to work in the morning.
- 1992 Landers/Big Bear quake (magnitude 7.3)—I was about 40 miles away and it threw me out of my bed and shook for 3 full minutes.
- 1994 Northridge quake (magnitude 6.7)—I was about 20 miles away. It shook the crap out of everything, and pancaked the apartment building a friend of mine was sleeping in. She survived. It also destroyed miles of the L.A. freeway system as brought down overpasses everywhere.