Earthquake While Travellig

I was there last month and I was curious how I'd handle it.

Probably be oblivious like you were.

A few years ago my wife and I were laying at the pool at the Cosmo in Vegas. Everything started to feel like you were on a boat & was slowly swaying. Really weird feeling. Lasted maybe 10 seconds. The waitress told us it was an earthquake. Later on we saw on the news there was a significant quake to too far away somewhere in So Cal.

Lincoln CA, couple years ago, sitting in my car in hotel parking lot, late afternoon. Listening to voice mails, car starts rocking back and forth. I thought it was just windy, look out the window and the leaves on the trees are not blowing around. Sure enough it was a smallish earthquake.

I lived in California for for over a decade and experienced a number of relatively mild earthquakes during that time, before moving to North Carolina. Our first vacation back to California was in 2019.

We flew from Raleigh to San Diego on July 4th and checked into a bay facing hotel room with a balcony, quite a few floors up. I had selected this because we watched Big Bay Boom from our balcony that evening, which was great.

The next evening we had just returned to the room from dinner and everything started swaying (and I swear I heard a big BOOM, but I may be mis-remembering it). My then 9-year old daughter's eyes go wide (she was born in NC so new to earthquakes). She heads to the balcony to see what's going on, and my husband grabs her by the back of the collar as she takes her first step out since the building is still shaking/swaying.

Turned out to be a magnitude 7.1. All those years in California, and it took 2 days back for me to experience the biggest quake of my life. I think San Diego was relatively far from the epicenter (out in the ocean) and wasn't damaged, but I definitely felt the effects. Can't imagine what it must feel like closer.

I was in the Delta lounge at the bottom of the Santiago airport when things started shaking and you could hear stuff falling on the floor above. Seemed to go on for a minute or more. Was a bit disconcerting - my first and only real earthquake experience. Turns out it was a 6.9 earthquake centered 30 kilometers away or so if I remember correctly. Airport workers just started cleaning up (lots of broken wine bottles and other stuff) and life went on. I don’t even think flights were delayed.

Chile has an earthquake somewhere almost every day.

Earthquake and you are fine as the building are meant to do that. When the Stardust built their new tower my mother was head of housekeeping. I was tagging along as she was inspecting it and one hit. That tower felt like it was going to fall over

Earthquakes of those magnitudes happen somewhere in Japan with regular frequency. Most buildings are engineered to easily handle them. That's why your clients didn't sweat it. Japan Meteorological Agency