6.5!!!!!!

As most of you already know by now, we experienced our first big earthquake here on the North Coast this past Saturday at 4:27pm. We've had little shakers here and there, but nothing like the 6.5 we experienced Saturday! Nick, Braedon, and I were all home at the time of the quake. We had just gotten back from a jog through Potowat village and a park play day with Braedon. When the earthquake occurred, I happened to be sitting on the sofa with Braedon next to our gigantic fish tank. What first clued me in that something was up, was watching the fish tank sway side to side soaking us and the floor below it. The shaking of the house was so intense, I honestly thought the house was going to come down. It lasted for what seemed like an eternity and then the power went off. When the shaking finally stopped and the random flying objects settled, we stepped outside to see our street lined with confused neighbors. We all congregated and discussed what was happening and whether we should be concerned about a tsunami. We live a few miles from the beach in low lying farm lands, but happen to be just out of tsunami zones. Thank goodness this type of earthquake was not related to an ocean tidal wave. After about four hours without power and lots of phone calls to friends and family, we retired for the evening hoping we didn't awake to any substantial aftershocks.

The next morning, we decided to pick up a Sunday newspaper to assess the damages. It appeared that Eureka had fared worse than us by the images filling the pages. We decided to take a drive through Eureka to check it out. Here are a few things we saw:

The Bead Shop in Old Town Eureka was closed for cleanup-


Take a look at the roof of this old brick building. The building used to house the old Six Rivers brewery. It is such a charming piece of history. The streets below are closed due to hazardous conditions. This building is going to be demolished because it is now unstable and unsafe:(



Check out the crack in the F street building. This building is connected to Nick's work office. There are cracks in his building as well (The old Vance Hotel).


The Ritz restaurant and building has some major cracking in it.



A lot of businesses lost entire windows!



Mother Nature can sure remind you that she is control. There are many things I LOVE about living in Humboldt County and earthquakes I now realize is not one of them.