Saturday, December 19, 2009

Huge scary earthquake!

Another big shaky one. Okay, it still didn't knock anything off the shelves. It did cause a precariously placed DVD to topple to the floor.

My first thought was that it's too cold to evacuate the building. But I grabbed my phone and keys and stood in the doorway, and listened to my neighbors laugh at each other for being scared. Thus I concluded it wasn't serious. But I think it's always better to stand in the doorway and be ready to go if it gets worse.

(update: If you want to see a list of recent earthquakes and their magnitude, go to this website: http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V6e/index.htm. It wasn't loading last night- I assume too much traffic!- but it lets you see the magnitude at the epicenter, and, if you click on the earthquake, a map of what it measured in different areas around Taiwan.
This one was still a 4 for me but I guess a strong 4? I think it's the strongest one I've felt. It was a 6 on the east coast and caused some toppling but I think no loss of lives. I only saw pics in a Chinese paper, and my character-reading of the article consisted of "Hualien... earthquake... no... night.")

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

A 4 is a 4 . . . there is no such thing as a "strong 4" vs. a "weak 4."

However, what can change the intensity is what floor you were on. I've heard that approx every floor up is about 1 more step up the Richter scale.

So, the same earthquake on the ground vs. on the 10th floor doesn't feel the same. The one of the 10th floor will feel much stronger.

Also the type of quake will affect the felt intensity. Whether the quake is a swaying movement or a "jumping" movement makes a difference in how strong the quake seems to feel.

Christina said...

But there's a 4.9 and a 4.1, which in my book is a strong 4 and a weak 4.