Results tagged “earthquakes”

A moderate earthquake rattled greater Los Angeles for 10 to 15 seconds last evening around 8:40 p.m., and it was felt as far south as San Diego. No major damage has been reported, but at least one person went to the hospital. Our bros at LAist registered a few aftershocks and link to a pic of some broken glass at a Starbucks.

Tomorrow morning at 5:11 a.m. our fair city will mark the 103rd anniversary of the great quake of '06, which will once again include guest of honor and one of the only living survivors (or the only?), 105-year-old Rose Cliver. Following the gathering at Lotta's Fountain, the day will kick off with a Bloody Mary breakfast at Lefty O'Doul's (333 Geary St) at 7 a.m. and will finish at 11 a.m. with the Survivor Luncheon at John's Grill. In related news...

The supernatural forces behind the Ed Jew storyline are not pleased with Halloween and earthquakes hogging all of the attention. As of today, Ed Jew officially has his fourth legal suit brought up against him. After asking Jerry Brown if he could get all litigious on Jew a few months ago, today SF City Attorney Dennis Herrera finally filed the lawsuit we've all been waiting for -- or not -- that he didn't live where he was supposed to live when he ran in 2006 and took office in early 2007.

Either under the table for protection or hiding from someone sporting a fiendish fannypack-khakis combo, Catherine Kilkenny of San Jose's Willow Glen looks scared as all hell, doesn't she? Many people were. Last night's 5.6 earthquake, which we didn't feel but hear the majority of you did, tore nerves to shreds, shook the ground, and sent magazines flying to the floor. In a little over 12 hours, it managed to cause quite the stir....

Earthquakes and Sabers and Sharks, Oh My!

As we only learned from reading the comments on our whiny post about the weather, there was just an earthquake in Berkeley about 30 minutes ago. It was a 3.0, centered near Claremont Ave. in the hills. That other quake yesterday was in Berkeley too.

Man, let it not be said that Lew Wolff doesn't get sh-- done. First he said he was going to build a new stadium for the A's and he did. Then he said he was going to get us a new soccer team and he did. Today, it's been announced that the San Jose Earthquakes are back from the dead and will start up again next year as an MLS expansion team. The team was in San Jose up until a few years ago but moved away to Houston due to stadium issues. Naturally, in Houston, the nee Quakes won a championship.

Here's todays stories from SFist

-There was a protest in the Mission over the the latest bit of immigration raids. -Flaks o' Gavin on gay porn proclamation: we did what? Oopsie.

Ah yes, the weekend. Finally! It's been a hectic week-- earthquakes, landslides, the whole Kenneth Eng fiasco, those purple latex gloves-- where will it all end? We don't know but we could sure use a drink and a good old fashioned shindig-- too bad that most of the Noise Pop shows have sold out. We've put together a list of runner-ups for the weekend in the city. Sure, its not Ted Leo, Cake or The Donnas, but you can get just as drunk for half the price. Here's a rundown of the haps:

-You know what $250 bucks at a fundraiser gets you for lunch? A lunch box of sushi. That's it. For $250 bucks, we'd want kobe beef in gold infused soy sauce in a bed of rare Nepalese quail. On the other hand, you did get to listen to Hillary.

So we were watching TV and listening to the wind whip around outside and then the wind got really loud and then everything started shaking and we thought, "hmmm, that's one really strong wind." Then it hit us, OH MY GOD, IT'S A MOTHERF_____ EARTHQUAKE.

So in light of yesterday's tiny "micro quake" the question is still out there: to panic or not to panic. Scientists are still saying there's nothing going on but they would say that. When was the last time you heard a scientist say "holy sh--, we're going to die!" Sometimes, in reading these stories, we think it would be better not to read the words they say, but instead, just check out to see if they do anything they normally wouldn't do. Like buy an earthquake preparedness kit. Or start hitting the bottle. Or move.

Don't go buying your brand new "San Jose of Fremont by way of 92" or "Bay Area 49ers of Santa Clara" t-shirts just yet because we're still a long way off from the moving trucks appearing. Things just ain't as easy as it sounds.

We were sitting at our desks playing on the computer (cough...surfing porn...cough...) when things start shaking and rolling. At first, we thought it was just some big huge gust of wind, something that can occasionally cause some rumbling. But when it didn't quite stop and picked up in intensity, we began to we realize it wasn't quite the wind and something else and should we then get under something like the coffee table or underneath or a door frame and OH MY GOD IT'S AN EARTHQUAKE AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Londonist prepares a Happy Birthday bath for Buddah this week and then things get all cliched. A madman goes on a rampage while axe-wiedling and London's mayor warns an American diplomat to avoid the kitchen if the heat bothers him so much.

Last week's winner, the East Bay Express: Vote for SFist in the EBX Readers' Poll! We love the chicken holding a sword with its foot in this week's Dream Comic. A company that puts prank pink flamingos on people's lawns (called "Flamingo Surprise"). Cover article: The Coup, along with that picture of their album with the World Trade Center blowing up. Rob Harvilla tells us his departure for the Village Voice isn't us, it's him. Good luck out there on the cold East Coast, Rob! Have fun with Christgau! Lit section. Hyphy hyphy hyphy hyphy hyphy. And SFist Eve's horoscope: she's going to "find the passion to unite what at first glance seems like an unlikely gathering of associates." That's us over here at SFist! The SF Weekly: Vote for SFist in the SF Weekly Readers' Poll! The Apologist on the 1906 festivities, titled "Ready to Rumble." ("Honestly, I'm disgusted. This is a time to be celebrating earthquakes, not studying them." Ha!). Sucka Free City columnist (male) gives birth on Second Life. It's a girl! Cover article: Jewel thieves. Book section: The guilty pleasure of the Da Vinci Code. SFIFF. Meredith eats French! Good thing Ced's away, as we expect he was driven to heights of fury by the part where Meredith asks why a confit of rabbit isn't the same as a rabbit terrine. (We don't know the difference but we're sure our Gastronome does!). And Dan Savage infuriates bisexuals again. The Guardian and the Metro, after the jump, along with the Weekly of the Week.

We have to admit, all this hubbub commemorating the anniversary of a catastrophic event, an event that could, at any moment, happen again, has given us a few moments of panic. For instance, sitting at our day job last week, we were startled when our desk started to shake. Then the floor started to shake, too. But it didn't stop. The same vibration kept going on and on, and unless this was the longest mild earthquake in history, we realized it was something other than the earth moving. When it didn't stop after an hour, and we had gotten good and dizzy, we finally figured out the culprit: a temp a few cubes down from us had an annoying habit of bouncing his legs up and down while he worked; a kind of running in place while sitting down, and apparently our floors are quite sensitive.

Man, not only did we not see Tom Cruise in our work place today, we also missed the earthquake. The USGS is reporting a 3.7 quake centered in Moraga at about 1:41 p.m. today, with two small aftershocks. BART ran at half-speed as a result

DCist helps us make more sense of the world this week. Posts like this concert review are the reason for Scott Stapp. DCist also enumerates the reasons for playing ultimate frisbee, Condi's tight buns, their love of a local convenience store, and their jealousy of a person in Seattle calling the city.

A 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the Hercules area of the East Bay around 10 a.m. this morning. But we didn't feel anything here in San Francisco, how about you? This report states that it was felt "as far north as Santa Rosa, as far east as Rancho Cordova, and as far south as Redwood City", so maybe we're just not that observant.

Hey, do you remember way back to two weeks ago when the latest member of the -ist family came on board and SFist Eve said we couldn't think of a reason to hate on them yet? Well, now we have one -- the San Jose Earthquakes soccer team has announced that they're decamping to Houston. MLS was reportedly unhappy with the persistent low attendance numbers at Spartan Stadium, and after San Jose was unable to reach an agreement to build them a new stadium downtown, and despite a rally of their faithful fans, the team decided to flee. Houston will make an official announcement tomorrow at 10 a.m. central time. We know, we know, it's our fault for tempting the Houston gods! We're sorry, Bay Area soccer fans! Funnily enough, the same week SFist Eve called down the vengeance of Houston on our fair -ist region, SFist Chris also posted about strange trends in migrating team names. Perhaps taking a note from this, San Jose has at least managed to keep ownership of the "Earthquakes" name. Because .... the Houston Earthquakes? Is there a fault in Texas that no one's told us about? San Jose says they'll bring soccer back as soon as they can find a new sponsor.

We've got a crapload to cover. We'll try to keep it short...

The only MacArthur we've ever encountered is the last BART stop to change from the Pittsburg/Bay Point and Richmond lines! Four folks in the Bay Area, though, have slightly different associations with the word, now that they've been awarded MacArthur genius grants of half a million dollars apiece. Three of our local winners are from Cal and one is from Stanford. From Cal, Lu Chen is a neuroscientist researching memory. Nicole King studies unicellular evolution, Michael Manga is a geophysicist studying Bay Area earthquakes, and from Stanford, Pehr Harbury is in drug bioengineering. The grant recipients can use the money for whatever they like. The other 21 winners this year include author Jonathan Lethem, an ergonomic violinmaker, a fisherman, a man who's been working to reduce auto emissions, and a rare book restorer. There was a hilarious article in the NY Times from a winner from last year, whose daughter takes great glee in defeating him at Candyland now ("I thought you were a genius, Daddy,"), and other Bay Area winners from last year (who included a local high school debate teacher) say they're all doing very well.

KRON 4's Brian Shields organized a huuuuuuge blogger meetup at their studios. They've decided to keep working on the rollout of their aggregator and commentary.

SFist came to a realization recently, that we let April 18th come and go without any acknowledgment that it was the 99th anniversary of the great quake of 1906. True, we admit to living in a constant state of denial that another huge quake will ever hit us again, and thinking about 1906 just doesn't help us. Seriously, how can you live in this city with any level of calmness if you aren't in a perpetual state of denial? How can you venture onto BART everyday without telling yourself that there's no WAY a huge quake will hit while you're halfway between the Mission and the Embarcadero? You can't be thinking about earthquakes while you sit peacefully in your apartment--which also happens to be built on a landfill. Nope! No quakes here! Please move along.

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The Weekly of the Week winner for two weeks in a row, the SF Weekly! (Okay, that sentence had too many occurrences of the word "week" in it, and we apologize for that.) Matt Smith reveals that Jake McGoldrick and Chris Daly engaged in some sizzling-hott male-male hugging action and made up over that whole tsunami fight thing. Awww. (Also, complicated workings about the Mission Housing Development -- we have absolutely no idea what he's talking about but it sounds serious!) ... and hey! Matt stole our "Daly Show" title for his article!! Cover article: Harmon Leon infiltrates with white supremacists. We sincerely hope they're paying Harmon lots of money to do this column because well, not only would it not be fun to have to listen to that kind of talk, Harmon also had to hang out with the white supremacists at Applebee's. (On the bright side, we do love those Applebee's chicken fingers.) We're now too freaked out to enjoy the rest of this issue -- even Nate's excellent Noise Pop 2005 otherwise excellent board game. And Savage Love: what to do about barebackers? The San Jose Metro. Activists monitoring police brutality in San Jose (it sure does seem like a lot of people get shot by the cops down there). Cover article: an online anti-porn group. Friend of SFist and Bitch Magazine editor Andi Zeisler is interviewed! The San Jose Cinequest Film Festival. Sausage (at a deli, you sickos) in Santa Clara. And a poetry slam in San Jose. The East Bay Express's part 2 on earthquakes (BART will liquefy!), the Guardian on Noise Pop, and our gold-plated Weekly of the Week award, after the jump.

Munich Re is a leading reinsurance company which basically means that they insure the insurance companies (but who insurances them? The rereinsurers?) and wind up doling out a lot money to insurance companies after natural disasters hit. To help the company prepare for the future, the company does research on possible catastrophic trends which is how they came up with the “natural hazard risk index.” It’s leading researcher, Gerd Berz, has spent the past thirty years monitoring things such as climate change, population trends, and infrastructure. Long story short, more population at greater density increases chances of “mega-disaster” at huge cost and toll. Besides helping Munich Re plan for the future, Berz’s job is to be the guy in all the disaster movie who spends all their time telling everyone something bad is going to happen, only to have nobody listen to them. While that job sounds slightly on the frustrating side, those guys always survive the movie.