Earthquake

At 7:16 this morning there was an 6.3 earthquake across the border in Wells Nevada. Many, many people were calling in to the Salt Lake news stations saying they felt it right here in the valley. I don't talk much about this for fear of causing a panic amongst my kinfolk, but we live about 2 miles from the fault line running at the base of the Wasatch Mountains. There hasn't been an earthquake here in hundreds of years but the scientists all agree it will happen some day. It could be soon or it could be in hundreds of years. For multiple reasons, the Mormons who settled this area, urge their members to store up food and water and other supplies that would get them through a disaster. So in our neighborhood and throughout the valley there are distaster preparedness classes, organized block captains and multiple business who offer different types of kits and supplies to get you through an event. I'm sure Californians have this same type of preparedness but being a midwesterner, I'm more attuned to the possibility of tornado destruction; this is all sort of foreign to me.


When we first moved here, I had a couple conversatios with neighbors about all this. I started storing up water and some food supplies. Fred kinda thought I was silly but a few weeks ago one of our neighbors came by and asked Fred if he would be willing to volunteer as the organizer of the Emergency Preparedness block captains in our neighborhood. I had to laugh because that was the last job I thought Fred would be interested in. I also had to laugh this morning; our neighbors, most of whom don't have pets (they have too many kids to have time for pets!), asked if we would call them right away if our dogs ever started acting funny. Supposedly animals can sense a quake coming and will pace, act nervous, pant, drool, cry etc. Uh, well, my two failed the test as early alert systems this morning. Both were snoozing away at 7:16.

This map shows the multiple earthquakes going on everyday in the west, most of them very small. But that big blue block, that's this morning's!