OOC # 39
The most noteworthy thing, to me, about the one here four years ago was that, as a kid and growing into my teens, I remember at least two or three significant (for our area) quakes...like, looking up from the living room floor to see hanging lamps swaying kinds of quakes. And then, for decades, there was pretty much nothing (except increasing talk from seismologists about how the lack of quakes could actually be cause for alarm, because the longer we went without one, the more likely it was to be severe when we finally had one, from all the tension built up between the tectonic plates that was accumulating as each year went by without even minor tremors.
So it was weird, after having them happen often enough as a kid that I was pretty unfazed by the quake (literally, as soon as I realized it was a quake, my brain was like, "Well...nothing to be done about it. Don't stand inside, stuff might break loose and fall, but don't go too far away from the building, because stuff might tumble off from overhead. Right here in the exterior doorway is about as safe a place as you're gonna find..."), having one that was significant, but not exactly a real property-damaging shaker (a few buildings got cracks in facades, and a few streets got cracks in the pavement...but nothing had to be reconstructed or even have serious repair work done), and having most of the people I know on FB in the area freaking out about being in an earthquake, waking up to stuff falling off shelves (light stuff, at that), feeling their car kind of shimmy as they were driving, etc. Part of me was like, "Really? It wasn't THAT bad. Unusual, sure, but have you people looked at news reports about BAD earthquakes? This was nothing..." And part of me was understanding...they have no frame of reference. Most of them are young enough that they either weren't yet born or were too young to remember Utah's last cycle of seismic activity, so they couldn't even compare this one to others in the past.
And part of me was like, "People...come on. We live ON A FAULT LINE. Quakes are gonna happen. Be glad this one just scared your aquarium fish. They've been telling us for years an earthquake was coming, and this was WAY less than what they had predicted." Sometimes being a pragmatist can cause some oddly conflicting emotional responses to situations...