Rhi & Benner: July 2008

Well it's been an eventful couple of days....

It all started on Saturday when the Benners went hiking with some LA friends to the Altadena waterfall. It was a scorching hot day and the desert is of course, dry, as deserts tend to be.

A couple miles up, we saw firetrucks up in the distance....and then as we hiked further, we heard/saw a helicopter flying overhead. There was ruble and dust flying everywhere as the helicopter stopped slightly ahead of us and someone began to belay down out of the helicopter. With hair blowing and dust in our eyes, we all crouched by a boulder, hoping the ruble would avoid our heads. I felt like I was on LOST. Turned out a woman had heat stroke that day, and the fire department came to her rescue. We have some great pictures, but Benner has the camera right now with him in Yosemite. We'll post upon his return.

Speaking of Yosemite, (where Benner and Adam are camping at the moment, a days worth of hiking distance from their car), there is apparently a wild fire. That's right. About 25 homes and 27 outbuildings have burned to the ground and there are 3,500 firefighters on the scene. Oh yeah, my coworker told me after the EARTHQUAKE. Please note that upon further research, the fire has not entered the boundaries of the park. Some of the park offices lost power and some neighboring highways were temporarily shut down but that's about it. So thankfully, he is safe. But regardless, he is has good judgement and the Holy Spirit guiding him so I trust he would smell the smoke and evacuate on his own!

So back to that earthquake. I was having a friendly conversation with a coworker when she randomly uttered the word "earthquake." In my head, I thought to myself, "why is she saying earthquake when we're talking about the studio tour?" but a second later it became clear when the building started to shake and sway. Everyone froze. I'm not talking a little rocking, sway, I'm talking I felt I was on a yacht on rough waters. Now it only lasted a few seconds, but it was violent enough to shake our nerves for the next hour. We jumped to the TV and heard it was a 5.8 earthquake which is "considerable." Windows across from our building looked like plexiglass, as they fluctuated back and forth.

I learned hours later that we felt it worse than it actually was. First of all, we're on the 10th floor which absorbs the aftershock or something like that. And secondly, (and this is the real reason) our building is on "rollers." So in an earthquake, the rollers cause the building to sway back and forth--more than they would in an earthquake. Maybe my engineer sister can weigh in on this point.

I do remember her telling me when she was in college that as an engineer it was her job to make buildings like milky ways instead of butterfingers so that in an earthquake they wouldn't break. It made complete sense! She is quite the educator. She probably didn't forsee back then that she would be working like tunnels. I guess in the context of the candy anaology, she would want to engineer them more like twizzlers as oppossed to chocolate covered pretzel?

If you're interested in reading more about the earthquake:

LOS ANGELES, July 29 -- A substantial earthquake shook metropolitan Los Angeles at midday Tuesday, swaying high rises in the city's center and western sections and rattling nerves across the region.

There were no immediate reports of injuries from the quake, which the U.S. Geological Survey initially said had a magnitude of 5.8 but then downgraded somewhat to 5.4. The quake struck at 11:42 a.m. (2:42 EDT) and its epicenter was 29 miles east-southeast of downtown, near the community of Chino Hills. The USGS measured the quake's probable depth at eight miles.
Media reports said the quake was felt as far south as San Diego and as far east as Las Vegas.
"It kind of started with a bang and then the rollers took over," said Jenni Palmer, 42, a legal secretary working in a high rise in Century City. "Everybody kind of took stock. Somebody looked up the magnitude. And then we all went back to work until they evacuated the building."

The quake was followed by several smaller aftershocks.
The initial damage reports were minor. The quake sent items flying off the shelves and into the aisles of a Chino Hills grocery store. Some phone service -- both on land lines and through cells -- was problematic at times, perhaps because of heavy use. An underground water main reportedly ruptured in an intersection just east of LA City College. Underground radar at Los Angeles International Airport was reportedly lost for a minute.

"Toward this area we felt it, but so far there's no damage that we know of," said Officer Kate Lopez, spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department. "We're still waiting to hear from everyone."

Thomas Heaton, a professor of engineering and seismology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, said, "A 5.4 right in the middle of the metropolitan area means that it was startling to millions of people. Of those millions of people, I'm sure we'll find some isolated instances of cracked plaster or broken things." But he added, "Generally speaking, you don't expect a 5.4 to do significant damage to structures."

Schools in metro Los Angeles were evacuated, television anchors left their desk to seek shelter and the Los Angeles City Council adjourned for a quarter hour to let nerves settle.
At the council meeting, people remained calm. "Earthquake," an official announced into the microphone. "Got an earthquake."
No damage was evident at City Hall, which had been retrofitted against seismic damage at the cost of $300 million.