April 24, 2003
Shake It Up, Baby
Always trust your instincts on these things when you live on the West Coast. I certainly don't suspect every shake of this or that of being an earthquake, but the sway of the counter at Stumptown this afternoon seemed pretty clear to me.
Indeed, there was an earthquake around these parts today. Apparently, it was actually a 3.9 quake followed by a 1.6 aftershock.
Says KGW:
The quake, centered about 10 miles northwest of downtown Portland and 5 miles west of Vancouver, was classified by seismologists as "minor." They pinpointed the epicenter near Kelley Point Park.
The first quake occurred at 12:26 p.m. about 11 miles under the surface, according to the Pacific Northwest Seismograph Network and the University of Washington's Seismology Lab. The aftershock followed at 12:35 p.m.
Last time a truly noticable quake was felt here was the Olympia quake a couple years back. At the time, I was working customer service for a cellular telephone company, and all of us reps spent much of the rest of the day filling in callers as to the details. It was the one day no higher ups at the company chided anyone for having web browsers open, since it was clear that, although not strictly telephone-related, we were in essence providing a kind of customer support by letting them know what the news was saying.
This time around, I don't think anyone else even noticed it occurred. I seemed to have been the only one sitting at Stumptown sensing that the shaking in question wasn't quite a normal everyday sort of thing.
There's more from OregonLive, KATU, and KOIN.
So far the only local weblog (out of those I check regularly, I should say) who seems to have mentioned it at all is that of Stephen Voss, whose entry on the matter you should definitely read.
Comments (1)
Ty on 11 Aug 2004
i have a taylor instrument company seismograph and something else like that i want to know how to make it work maybe you know but if not that is fine!