The biggest recorded quake was a 6.9 was the San Fran Quake.


The last three in the San Fernando Valley/ Lost Angeles area were the
Sylmar '71, Whittier Narrows '87 (?) and Northridge '94 quakes.

Those were all 6.2 and above. On the Richter scale every 10th of a point is one hundred times stronger than the previous point.(I may be wrong on that-
It's been awhile since I have done Quake Trivia.

There are two different kinds of quakes- the shakers and the jolts.

The shakers are like having a mattress in the back of a truck and laying on it.
Then have a friend drive down a potted dirt road. These last anywhere from a few seconds to a whole minute.

The jolts are really sharp, short lateral moving quakes. In 94 I was in a store next to a display of 2-liter soda bottles when a sharp aftershock hit.

This is theater of the mind time!

Put a 2 liter bottle on a table then hit the edge, watch the liquid. Take about 250 bottles, stack them up the way they do in a supermarket and move the supermarket......Freak out! I did!

I made eye contact with another shopper who was standing about 15 feet away- we had a 30 minute conversation in about 10 seconds...LOL, it was like this - #%@#$ THAT WAS BIG! ARE YOU O.K.? SON-OF-A-&^$%! WTF DO WE DO IF IT HAPPENS AGAIN? HOLY^@#$# JEEZUZ CRIMINY I DIDN"T SEE THAT COMING....and never said a word. We then kinda smiled and laughed, nodded to each other and went on our way.

---------

During the 87 quake I was in the basement of a 10 story building and saw the six foot thick concrete floor doing the wave......that was wild!