On Tuesday I experienced my first California earthquake. After the first wave I thought: Oh, a cute little earthquake! Then I realized that a bigger wave would be coming. And it did: it was like being in the wooden house of the second pig, while the wolf huffed and puffed from outside.

The magnitude was 5.4 and the epicenter was very close to here:

I also discovered that Richter was a Caltech professor, and Caltech monitors earthquakes for all California (altough they don’t use the Richter magnitude scale anymore, but something called the moment magnitude scale). In the hours after the quake, there were lots of media trucks around:

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The Caltech monitoring system sent me an email containing a wave file (?). Maybe they thought that a female voice helps in tranquilizing people.

I also received this email from the administration:

Caltech had no injuries. We had some chemical spills that required temporary evacuation in at least one building. We had minor damage, including broken water pipes in Noyes and in the Cogen plant. Four elevators went temporarily off line. The campus responded as you would have hoped. Everyone did their part – from the daycare center to the environmental health and safety group, facilities, computing and telecommunications, to individuals in all the buildings and labs, and to HR for the notice to be thoughtful of those employees whose homes were closer to the epicenter.

I assume that it was by coincidence that, at the time of the earthquake, the Caltech Trustees were being given a tour of the Seismological Lab. I am told that they were impressed. Public Relations and the Seismo Lab must have been busy. I counted 10 media trucks parked outside as I left campus last night.

Best demo ever!