Hey, I Waited Till It Was Over!

So Easter Sunday I was lying down, working on my laptop, when all of a sudden the lights flicker and the room starts rocking back and forth.

Realizing it was an earthquake, I hopped up and thought about standing under the door frame–except I've recently heard that that isn't such a great idea after all–and I became quite surprised at how long the quake was taking.

Previous quakes I've been in since moving to California have often just been a single jolt, and they'd never gone on as long as this one. (It ended up being 60-90 seconds long, which is a long time in earthquake terms.)

So I decided to go outside in case things got worse and my house became dangerous to be in.

Lo and behold, a lot of my neighbors had decided to do the same thing!

It felt like the pavement was sitting on the surface of a giant bowl of Jello pudding that was rapidly wiggling back and forth.

But there was no damage, and so my guess is that when the quake hit my area (El Cajon) it wasfelt like somewhere between a 4 and a 5. Let's say a 4.0 for simplicity purposes,

At the time I had no idea where the epicenter of the quake was, but given its length, I thought it might be quite a distance away and, if so, I thought, "This may be huge."

After it seemed to finish (though I continued to feel things that felt like aftershocks–or after-wiggles, one of which was very strong and went on for a few seconds), I went back indoors and . . .

. . . started talking about it on Facebook (from which it automatically got picked up by my Twitter feed).

I mean, it's the 21st century, now, right? That's what you're supposed to do.

I also posted photos and updates and I learned more.

Turned out that the epicenter was south of the border town Calexico, in northern Mexico, south of Imperial County.

And it was a 7.2, which makes it actually a bigger quake than the one that struck Haiti.

And since the earthquake scale is base-10 logarithmic, that means that if the quake had a force of 4.0 here in El Cajon, it was more than a thousand times stronger at the epicenter.see combox

Someone commented on one of my Facebook posts with a link to the following cartoon, which I got a real kick out of.

UPDATE: I am informed that some installments of this comic involve problematic material. Caveat lector. 

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

14 thoughts on “Hey, I Waited Till It Was Over!”

  1. You were the first to report the quake that I know of. After reading your status on FB, I immediately tuned in to both Fox News and The Weather Channel. It took about 6-7 minutes for them to report anything about an earthquake. Good job, Jimmy!

  2. That comic is from XKCD.com, which is mainly about computer science, physics, and math, but also contains a ton of very graphic sex humor. You might want to note that somehow, in case any of your readers go looking.

  3. The changes in technology are amazing and amusing at the same time.
    XKCD is one of those I wish I could sit down with the writer and explain theology of the body so he could write all around good comics. The comics have a fun way of pointing out truths we otherwise wouldn’t look at. As it is many are hilariously funny, many as a nerd I can’t help but nod and laugh, and yet so many as a Catholic I can’t help but weep. Yet even some of the sex comics are unintentionally correct when he points out the pain and suffering that comes with casual sex.
    The good thing is that they are all stick figures, so even the graphic sex scenes…aren’t.

  4. Perhaps if all of the neighbors standing outside had started jumping up and down in rhythm, it would have stopped the earthquake 🙂
    Actually, there are, currently, two schools of thought on what to do during an earthquake: duck and cover vs. near cover. Running outside is a third option, but haven’t you seen all of the disaster films: that’s when the monsters surface from underground.
    The Chicken

  7. LOL. That’s a cute comic.
    How much things have changed since when nobody but the techs understood the Internet and used the lingo.

  8. Good description of the quake. I was also in El Cajon at the time, enjoying an Easter BBQ with a glass of Alpine Red Ale. Shaking didn’t seem that intense, but its duration surprised me too. But as a geologist I rather enjoyed it. Have to correct you though – the logarithmic “earthquake scale” that you mentioned is a measure of energy release, and it’s 7.2 everywhere, because it’s a measure of the quake itself. You were actually experiencing “intensity”, which is a subjective measure and varies with location. The two are related, of course, but not the same. I’d put its intensity where we were at about IV “light” (perception outside) to V “moderate” (perception indoors). Mapped intensity near epicenter was IX “violent”. But this is a perception scale, not really linear or logarithmic. Using the peak ground acceleration ranges associated with the intensity scale, it looks like shaking in northern Baja was about 10 times stronger than in El Cajon. Like the “Good Friday Earthquake” in 1964 (Alaska), we might refer to this one as the “Easter Sunday Earthquake”, though it lacks the same scriptural resonance as the original “Good Friday Earthquake” near Jerusalem.

  9. Excellent comic.
    And the physics ones are funny sometimes, too. (Trust me, physics humor is hard.)

  10. JM: Thanks! I was unaware of the graphic stick figure sex. You’ve struck one of the reasons I created Rule 6 and Rule 7 (i.e., in case I’m unaware of something like this)!
    Greg: Thanks for the clarification! I misunderstood!

  11. No problem, Jimmy. And it was the text of some of the comics I was referring to as graphic, not so much the stick figures, although he does draw a little more anatomically at times.
    It is a very funny comic, Christina. We read it here at work, and post some of them on the wall (the physics, math, and computer ones, that is). I often get the same reaction you describe to the tragic outcomes of the characters’ fornication. It’s a real shame that such an intelligent and humorous writer doesn’t see the sin he so accurately portrays.

  12. So is everyone here kind of nerdy? As in a bunch of Jesus Geeks? FWIW, that’s what I am, too.

  13. Glad you liked the comic. Sorry, I didn’t think to include a warning about a few of Randal Monroe’s more questionable comics. Overall it’s my favorite comic to read. I agree that, were he understanding the Theology of the Body, he’d be an unstoppable force.

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