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South Napa Earthquake

63dot

63dot

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jun 12, 2006
5,269
339
norcal
This morning 3:20 am, 6.0 magnitude, West Napa fault, only 7 miles deep

...felt in wine country and San Francisco and possibly biggest quake since 1989 earthquake

70 people in ER, 30 gas leaks, 60 water leaks, 10 extra ambulances called to support 12 already on duty, all extra police and fire personnel called up

...some buildings considered total loss (CNN).

early report 6:05 am PST:

http://www.modbee.com/2014/08/24/3501213/61-earthquake-registered-in-south.html
 
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63dot said:
I hope you are OK. We didn't feel anything in south bay near Monterey/Salinas, CA.
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I am, thanks. It didn't seem to be too bad beyond the Napa/Sonoma area.
 

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NorCal Quake.

The gas fires remind me of working Loma Prieta. I used to live in Cordelia just a stones throw from American Canyon. Got a text from friends still there. One buddy said he doesn't know if he has damage. He's still checking.
 
I'm in Berkeley. I felt shaking around 3:20am, but I don't think there's a lot of damage around here. My first earthquake experience actually.
 
Good to hear impulse. 6+ is pretty significant but not huge, I guess. Aftershocks expected in the 5 range.

Hoping Citizenzen checks in and all is well there.
 
Not a thing for us in Sacramento. Not a rumble. Though I do have to say we're at least 50 miles from American canyon.

The epicenter appeared to be a little north of Napa, between Napa and, say, Yountville. Downtown Napa took the brunt of it. The fault line was a long dormant one, overdue to go off, according to the news here and USGS.

BL.
 
Gutwrench said:
Good to hear you're fine too bradl.
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Actually, I'm in trouble. I slept through it while it woke my wife up. We probably had roughly a 2.5 - 3.0 here, as some things went swaying. no major or minor damage here though.

The Napa Courthouse bore the brunt of it so far, as a good sized chunk of it came down. Our local NPR station has 2 reporters who live in Napa covering the entire thing. Another lives in Vallejo, which is right on American Canyon road.

Anywho, Obligatory Jeff Dunham/Walter joke. If there were fatalities, I wouldn't post this, but there isn't, so I will. Starts at the 1:34 mark, but here's the whole clip. Enjoy.


BL.
 
That is a pretty big earthquake to sleep through! Glad to see there wasn't that much damage given how big it was.

Worst part about this, was all the wine that was destroyed. :D

I kid of course.
 
ucfgrad93 said:
Fortunately, the damage seems limited from such a powerful earthquake.
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The California Report went over a little bit of this in detail, especially regarding the fault line. All of this actually happened on the San Andreas fault system. This particular fault happens to be on the northeastern shelf of that, and runs a bit perpendicular to the Pacific Plate (remembering this from memory; I woke up to listening to this this morning). But it, the San Andreas, and Hayward fault lines are all connected, which is a wonder, considering that it didn't do much more damage outside of Napa/Sonoma/Vallejo/Yountville.

By contrast, Loma Prieta's epicenter was in Santa Cruz, 70 miles south of the Bay Bridge, and it was the bridge that fell, along with the most lives lost in Oakland.

Sacramento isn't on that fault system, let alone on that plate, which explains why we barely felt anything here.

However, for there, 28 power transformers, 60 water mains, 3 severely cracked roads, and a lot of wine. So if you are on that 6-month long waiting list for your reservation at The French Laundry, your wait just got longer. :p

BL.
 
Jawbone, which sells a personal sleep monitoring device, posted this amusing little graphic...
 

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In the south bay, I didn't hear about much shaking of course, but somebody from Fremont got shaken quite a bit so that map may not be entirely accurate. They were freaked out and to them it felt very close.

That being said the person was fully awake at 3:20 am and may have slept through it and not noticed it otherwise. There's so much more you can feel if you are just hanging around at 3:20 with nothing to focus on if you are awake then a 6.1 hits 70 or so miles away. I was considerably closer to Loma Prieta when that 6.9/7.0 hit, but walking outside with wife, and I didn't feel a thing even though some near me inside buildings say they got a good shake. But many years later I was on all brick porch with friend and a 2.7 hit and we felt it quite strongly.
 
And later on that day, you have this:

18vonw.St.4.jpeg


As the video game said, "Skate or Die!!!" :D

BL.
 
I'll also leave this here for you, so you can see what they've been dealing with in Napa. FYI: The some of the buildings you see there, like the courthouse and church, have been there since the 1840s.

BL.

 
Big job to rebuild

...and the fingers will be pointing with awful accusations if the bay area politics is any measure

This won't become a 6-8 billion dollar disaster like Loma Prieta in 1989 but it certainly won't be only a billion like the papers initially said. I feel so sorry for Napa and this will have major repurcussions for the whole wine industry for years to come. They are already calling this one of the big three or top three along with the '89 quake and the really bad one in 1906.
 
63dot said:
...and the fingers will be pointing with awful accusations if the bay area politics is any measure

This won't become a 6-8 billion dollar disaster like Loma Prieta in 1989 but it certainly won't be only a billion like the papers initially said. I feel so sorry for Napa and this will have major repurcussions for the whole wine industry for years to come. They are already calling this one of the big three or top three along with the '89 quake and the really bad one in 1906.
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I want to say that the news bump yesterday on this already had a pricetag of roughly $300 million to repair all of this.. and there already has been a huge expose on earthquake insurance here again.

Here you go.

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201408290900

BL.
 
bradl said:
I want to say that the news bump yesterday on this already had a pricetag of roughly $300 million to repair all of this.. and there already has been a huge expose on earthquake insurance here again.

Here you go.

http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201408290900

BL.
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I like Krasny. It should be an interesting thing to see. I wonder what other cities sustained damage in the South Napa quake. I know some in SF and San Jose felt it and some felt aftershocks quite a bit away, too.

I wonder if a larger place like SF or SJ would get on the ball better than a Napa or that the relative smallness of Napa makes it easier to get things into repair mode. When it's one building, there's the legalities, paperwork, and construction. I just don't know how it's approached when there are so many broken buildings and other buildings which may look fine but are total losses.
 
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