Earthquakes vs. tornadoes

Mel Makaw.

Like many of you, I felt the earthquakes a couple of weeks ago, the ones in Mettler and Lamont, and I admit they scared me a little.

I was sitting in my rocking recliner in my living room, minding my own business and watching the Olympics on television, when my chair started rocking from side to side instead of forward and backwards. That's how I knew it was an earthquake. Then the alert on my phone startled me by going off and telling me to duck and cover ... and I knew it was a significant one.

Then it just didn't stop and in fact shook not only my recliner but my whole house. I decided to sit there and ride it out. I didn't think to time it, but others said it lasted anywhere from five to ten seconds. However long it actually did last was too long for me.

Then I felt a small aftershock. I also understand there were several of those, but I only really felt the one at the time. I did, however, feel another smaller earthquake a few days later.

I've had enough of that, thank you very much!

I'm not a fan of earthquakes, although I do really like events of extreme weather (sometimes I think I should have been a storm chaser in my younger days). I grew up mostly in the Midwest so I'm used to tornadoes (and other extremes), and quite frankly I'd rather be in a tornado than an earthquake. Call me crazy but that's how I feel.

In an earthquake, there is nowhere to go to hide or get away from it – everything is shaking and the warnings are a little late; in a tornado you get warnings sooner, in time to act – or you can actually see it coming – and you can go to the basement or storm cellar if you have one. Of course that's not always the case, but the odds seem better to me.

I recently went with friends to see the movie "Twisters" at the HitchingPost (I'm so glad our little hometown theater is open again!), which was all about storm chasers, people who follow tornadoes for both scientific and adrenaline reasons. I thought it was quite a furiously frightening film and I liked it a lot (although I thought the first one in 1996, called "Twister," was better). I even like movies about tornadoes better than I like movies about earthquakes.

Seeing that movie took me back to the summer of 1969 when I was standing in the picture window of my parents' house, with my mother, looking out at the rain and twirling storm clouds in Dennison, Iowa. We had heard we were in a tornado watch (not a warning yet), but we weren't too worried. For one thing, we lived near the bottom of a hill; for another, it had started to rain.

But the rain stopped and a few minutes later the house shook. We grabbed the dog and headed for the basement, where we got a little giggly because we couldn't remember which corner would be the safest to hide in. Before we could figure it out, the phone rang. I went to answer it. It was a neighbor asking if we were okay because part of our roof was gone.

I went upstairs and looked and sure enough, a corner was missing. It turns out (according to the neighbors who were outside watching), the funnel formed just above our house, came down and grabbed the corner of our roof and then dissipated. The only other damage in the neighborhood was from our flying roof pieces.

We felt very lucky, although that particular tornado was mild compared to the wild fury that was shown in this summer's film. It was much milder than others I've been in, too, and compared with what others have experienced; I know all of my experiences with tornadoes are much milder than what people in the Midwest and the South are experiencing in these current crazy days of climate change.

But while I'm glad I can say I've been in a few good earthquakes – comparatively mild too – over the years as well as tornadoes, I still think I'd rather live in tornado country than earthquake country, if I had a choice. Feeling the earth move beneath my feet – like I did on the 3rd of July for the Ridgecrest earthquake a few years ago – or beneath my seat like I did a few days ago, is a feeling I don't think I'll get used to any time soon.

On second thought, maybe I've used up my quotient of adrenaline – maybe my wanna-be-a-storm-chaser days are over and I'm not really sure I'd be comfortable in tornado alley again either. I guess I'll stay where I am and hope the big one doesn't come for a long, long time.

© 2024 Mel Makaw. Mel, local writer/photographer and author of On the Bright Side, a Collection of Columns (available locally at Tehachapi Arts Center and Healthy Hippie Trading Co.), welcomes your comments at [email protected]/.