Be honest please..moving 2 EAst Bay area, earthquake question (Oakland: apartment, how much)

[palmtree333]

Hi everyone!
I'm moving with the family to the East Bay area, and we're eyeing Walnut Creek as our destination.

I know it's earthquake country up there, I know, but being from the East Coast I really want to get a feel of how it is. I'm not too worried, but my wife is. So, I thought I'd ask locals and/or people that have been there, etc.

How often do you feel tremors on an average? once a month? a week? a year? Shaking? How many earthquakes did you feel in the last year, whether it be tremors, shaking, or the real thing? I read a post where someone felt like the door was being slammed int eh basement...but she had no basement. that was the tremors, etc. I went to the Walnut Creek page and there's all this information on earthquake, detailed preventative procedure, advice and frankly it did scare me a bit. I know it's essential to be prepared, but how is it living there "earthquake wise"? I've been to SF a few times and LOVE it...................

Please be honest or frank or whatever because this information helps me in deciding whether to take the job or not, thnx.

[mayorhaggar]

When you move here, depending on your personality you might obsess over it but eventually you will get over it and put it in the back of your mind. It's really not that big an issue most of the time. Obviously if a big quake hit it would be a big deal, but they are really very rare even here.

In terms of regularly feeling temblors, it depends, sometimes there will be one you can feel every couple of months, sometimes a few per week, and sometimes we can go a couple of years without feeling one. There are minor earthquakes all the time but very few can be felt. 90% of the ones I felt were like if a car slammed its door right outside my apartment, it was like a quick bump that you feel and then it's gone. One I felt I could feel the building shaking very slightly, that was a bit scary. Biggest one I've been through was on Halloween in 2007, it was something like a 5.-something, pretty big. I was up in a classroom on the 6th floor in downtown SF. At first we noticed that a projection screen by the blackboard was shaking up and down a bit, then we could all feel the building swaying back and forth. That was pretty scary.

People here are aware of the dangers but don't really worry about it day to day, which I think is the best way to deal with it--be prepared but don't let fear ruin your life or make you miserable. Definitely get several gallons of water stored and a few days of food stored that you could eat if you weren't able to go grocery shopping for a few days. Water can get shut off in a big quake even if there's not that much structural damage, and

Other than that I wouldn't really worry too much about a mega super quake. The main threat right now is probably a Hayward Fault quake which from what I've read wouldn't create as big a quake as the San Andreas can--Hayward would be like 7.0 or less. BUT, the problem is that the Hayward fault runs right under a very populated area in the East Bay, from around Hayward up through Oakland and Berkeley. If it hit under any of these areas there would be a ton of damage even in a smallish quake because the closer you are to a quake the more damage there is, generally.

[ttocs99]

I'm a former East Coaster, who moved from NY to SF in 1999 (moved back to NY in 2006, moved back after a divorce, not because I wanted to move). While living in the city, my second week there, I was laying on the couch in my 6th floor corporate housing apartment on Russian Hill, and I felt what I thought was a large truck rumbling by the apartment, maybe even a train. In my head, I said, "WTF was that ?" Then I realized it was an earthquake.

In November of 1999, I found an apartment in Walnut Creek, and lived there for 7 years. I probably "felt" 5 or 6 earthquakes during that time. A few minimal earthquakes that actually woke up my ex-wife and I. So as far as being worried about earthquakes, I wasn't at all, never thought of them, because they hardly ever happened.

BTW I am very jealous of you and your family. I can't tell you how much I loved Walnut Creek when I lived there. In fact, in the 3 times I've been back to the Bay Area from NYC, I always spend a day in Walnut Creek. I'm a native NY'er, but I'd take Walnut Creek and the Bay Area over NY any day of the week. I love the slower paced way of life in California, especially Northern California.

[twins4lynn]

I'm not sure what you mean by the tremors, shaking or real thing (wouldn't they all be the real thing?). Anyhow, I think I felt one earthquake in the past year. While there are lots of quakes in the area, most are very small and not felt.

There was probably a lot of info on the Walnut Creek page (website?) because yesterday was the anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake (a biggie from 1989).

[thecooler]

I've lived in northern CA almost all of my 40 years, i think I've felt maybe 10-20 earthquakes in my entire life. Most of those were basically a little shaking, where I stopped what i was doing and debated running to the nearest doorframe and before I even could get up, it was over. The exception was Loma Prieta in 1989, that one was of course a biggie. I lived in Monterey at the time. No one I knew was injured, I think at my house some stuff fell off the mantel and the power was out for 2 days, otherwise all was ok (obviously other people weren't so lucky).

I have an emergency kit at home and otherwise I don't worry about quakes at all. I'm sure more people die every year from harsh weather, snow or heat then from all the earthquakes in US history. As long as you don't live/work on landfill, then you're likelihood of getting hurt/killed in a major earthquake is pretty miniscule, and even if you do, your odds of injury are still pretty small, as CA's buildings and infrastructure are built to withstand major earthquakes.

[mstnghu2]

It's inevitable that the next "big one" will happen. With that said, large earthquakes in the Bay Area are few and far between. Yesterday happened to be the 22nd anniversary of the infamous Loma Prieta quake.

Just try to put things in perspective. There are countless homes and other structures that are standing today that were built before the Loma Prieta quake that suffered little or no damage at all. You can reasonably make a building to withstand a large earthquake and building codes in CA are very strict when it comes to building structures to survive a quake. You can't hurricane/tornado-proof buildings though and those things cause far more damage in other parts of the country every single year, whereas we haven't had a serious quake for over twenty years.

I'll take living in an earthquake-prone region any day over living in a place with extreme weather. I think many people from other places have this idea that big earthquakes are a common occurrence that we live with in CA all the time.

The last earthquake I was actually awake during and felt was about three years ago. My wife and I were out to dinner and saw the lights in the restaurant start to sway back and forth. It was over in about ten seconds and wasn't even strong enough to make people duck and cover. People basically just shrugged it off.

The next "big one" is a real concern. It will happen, but it's not like it's something that people here go around worrying about. You do your best to be prepared by having an emergency kit and making sure large furniture and other objects are secured to the walls so they won't tip over. You're much more likely to just suffer property damage in a quake than be seriously injured or killed.

[Hemlock140]

I'm from the Bay Area (40 years). I remember a pretty good jolt we had in 1957 when I was a kid and we lost out chimney in San Bruno, and of course the 1989 Loma Prienta when I was working in Oakland. Other
than that the earthquakes were not memorable. There were some that knocked things off walls or cracked a driveway or sidewalk, but you get
used to them and most are just enough movement to make you say "was that an earthquake?" I would say that over all that time there was not more than 1-2 a year that were really noticable.

[gone down south]

I've been here 2 years, felt the shaking twice.

FWIW, houses and infrastructure here are built to handle most earthquakes. And even if the Big One does hit, it's not like the entire coast is falling into the ocean - there's going to be damages and casualties, but this is huge area, the odds of you being right on top of wherever it hits are pretty low.

Compared to the CERTAINTY that the Southeast Coast get hit by 5-10 hurricanes per year, that the Midwest will have tornadoes weekly, that the Northeast will get icestorms and blizzards that kill a dozen or so a year, etc., I'd say you have very little to worry about here.

[palmtree333]

Very helpful. Thanks for the input. This definitely gives me a good perspective.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Most single family homes here are wood frame, with framing bolted to the foundation. Such structures are essentially indestructible even in a M 9.0 (which is technically an impossibility since the plate boundary here is strike slip not a subduction zone). The one caveat would be so called "over garage" designs, which, if built prior to the 1970s may have "soft walls" on either side of the garage door, leading to a slump or partial collapse. Most homes of this genre are in The City, Oakland and inner ring suburbs and are generally not found in the inland East Bay. Even if you have a home like this (which we do) the retrofit to protect the soft walls is really easy.

Even if a home is a complete fixer (and older than 1960s) and not bolted to the foundation the worst that would happen would be expensive retweaking of the framing to the foundation, not a collapse.

Avoid un reinforced masonry construction.

Simpson Strong Tie is your friend.