StJames; I remember that day well. There was a significant baseball game in SF. As I was leaving the Pleasanton Kaiser facility, I pulled out onto the street, and suddenly it felt like the wheels were loose. I pulled off into the large shopping mall across the street, and got out to look at my car. Another driver did the same, each of us looking at our perfectly normal cars in perplexity, until another tremor came. We then looked at each other in understanding. He took off, and I watched the Pleasanton facility. A few people came out and stood around for five minutes or so. They then went back in, and I hit the freeway to go to my friends' place. I made it without incident, and we were wondering why the game wasn't on, then came some shots of the Oakland Bay Bridge with some spans down. I then realized that it was worse than I had thought.
I called the large Walnut Creek facility Emergency Dept., where I then worked, and asked if I should come in. I was told that it was pretty much business as usual, and they weren't activating their disaster plan. Very few injuries showed up.
One thing that people don't realize is that the Richter scale is logarhythmic. However, it is 30 times more or less between the numbers. Thus, a earthquake of 5 will have 1/30 the energy of one rated at 6. Another way of putting this is that an earthquake of 7 will have 900 times the energy of one rated at 5 (30 x 30). So small changes in numbers mean large energy changes.
Yours until the big one (it is NOT too late to leave California. heh heh heh) Walt