Landers earthquake 1992

In the summer of 1992, I was 9 years old.  Driving up to Big Bear, CA with my parents and my brother, I leaned my seat back and gazed up at the rocks.  I thought aloud, "What happens if these rocks all fall down?"  "They're not going to fall down, Shellie!" said my mom.  Less than 24 hours later, just before 5am, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake with an epicenter nearby in Landers, CA shook us awake.  My brother and I probably would have slept through it had our parents not hollered from the other room "IT'S OK KIDS!  WE'RE JUST HAVING AN EARTHQUAAAKE!"  The shaking lasted an eternity, er, two or three minutes.  Once the shaking ceased, we gathered and sat huddled on a little loveseat in the living room.  There was minimal damage to the inside of the cabin: just some broken dishes plus a mounted moose head lost it's teeth!  There were many aftershocks - one of which was not actually an aftershock, but a new earthquake altogether.  A new earthquake with the epicenter in Big Bear with a magnitude 6.5 occurred just 3 hours after the Landers earthquake.  At one point during the day, we all went out onto the deck to relax.  My dad and brother were each sitting separately in director's chair.  My mom kept trying to get everyone up to walk to the nearby liquor store so we could use their payphone to call our relatives in case they had heard about the earthquakes.  We all went for a walk to the store, and when we got there, another aftershock hit.  There was liquor flying off the shelves and crashing to the ground.  Telephone poles were swaying.  Windows were bulging!  We survived that, called home, then walked back to the cabin.  The only other damage to the cabin was two bricks from the chimney broke off and crashed through the two chairs my dad & brother had just been sitting in.  After a day or so, the rocks I prophesized falling got cleaned up and we could get home.  

Interesting tidbits, as taught to me by a friend in Spokane, WA (on the border of Idaho)

Clarkia, a small town in Shoshone County in northern Idaho is the only place you can dig for star garnets outside of India!  The star garnet is the Idaho state gemstone and comes in many different shades.  Star garnets get their name from a rare characteristic that causes them to display a reflection like a star. (http://www.fs.fed.us)



(image credit: www.stewartsgemshopinc.com)

Jackasses topple an old formation at Goblin Valley State Park in Utah

I wanted to weigh in briefly on the morons who knocked down a big lump of sandstone, a "hoodoo," for fun.  The (now former) boy scout leaders filmed themselves joking around while toppling that 200 million year old piece of natural history from the Jurassic period and posted it on Facebook.  Publicly!!  Major palm-face!  Just unreal that they would do it, much less brag about it and be so cocky as to not care if law enforcement officials saw.

Geology of Facebook

I started a discussion on Facebook about interesting about the Geology of the region in which you live.  Some funny answers!
North Dakota:  it's all farmland, good soil.
Spokane, Washington:  carved out by repeated floods from glacial Lake Missoula long, long ago; there is gold in them thar hills!
Moah, Utah:  the bones of the earth are exposed
Japan:  sits on top of the edge of three tectonic plates, making it prone to earthquakes and volcanoes.  The buildings here are made to survive heavy earthquakes with minimal to no damage.
Brooklyn, NY: the borough features a long beachfront;  From its ancient bedrock to fault zones that cut across the city to its geographic position at the edge of a glacier
Lake Michigan: there is a faultline that runs through Lake Michigan - it gets earthquakes!
Lake Isabella, CA:  We used to have a lake
Bakersfield, CA:  lots of dirt and rocks; dry riverbeds;
My input:  The dense Tule fog in Bakersfield is like a natural disaster!  Our school-aged children have 3 hour fog delays.  Since we are in a valley, the fog gets trapped and lingers.  Also, our local hockey team, The Condors, used to be called The Fog!