[quote author="Anon." date=1217456893]I use the QuakeHold straps and they work great. You can also get them at Home Depot. Well worth the cost. They have special straps for all sorts of things, including flat-screens. (note to self: strap the refrigerator!) Just don't forget to get extra straps for the thing the TV sits on.
Museum putty is good stuff, too. Easy to remove from furniture and doesn't stain the wood.
Another good thing to get are the baby locks for the kitchen cabinets. That way you don't end up having to clean up after broken plates and glasses.
I also have wind-up radios and flashlights that I purchased during the Y2K thing - they were readily available at the time and come in handy when the electricity goes out.</blockquote>
The kitchen cabinet baby locks are essential. I lived in Santa Cruz, 7 miles from the epicenter of the so called SF quake in '89. Every cupboard opened up and everthing in there went flying across the room with such intensity. I was in college living with mom, who happens to be a hoarder/collector and it was so frustrating because I couldn't get to a doorway. Things were flying at me in all directions. I finally knelt down in the middle of the floor and protected my head as they taught us in school. I was so shaken up by that one that it must have been ten minutes before I realized the warm stuff dripping down was blood and not sweat because I still couldn't feel the gash I got when mom's ceramic container filled with kitchen utensils flew off the top of the fridge and broke on my head.
I actually learned a lot from that one, so when I moved to Agoura Hills two weeks before the '94 quake we were better prepared. The experience of being so close to the epicenter of a 6.9 and a 7.1 has never left me. Two days ago I was thinking about earthquakes and made a mental note of the things that I'm uncomfortable with still here, such as having le creusets sitting on a shelf above the cabinets. I'm really upset with myself for not having moved them to a saner location. In fact, I noticed that the birds were acting funny on Monday, which is what me made me wonder on Monday if one was coming. I even called our EQ insurance on Monday because there had been a mix up and I just wanted to make sure the policy was all sqaured away.
I was in Anaheim for this one, ironically having a meeting on disaster recovery and on our way into the data center when it struck. We had a lot 5's up north growing up, so I knew what I was feeling was in the low 5 range, but my biggest fear was that it was an 8 somewhere farther away. Everyone went right to their cell phones, which of course were met with busy network. I just wanted to get out of there and turn on my public radio station.
What is it with Hispanics and the earthquakes? I had one of my business partners out from Chicago and he's asking me why all the Hispanics are clustered outside. I lived in a heavily hispanic area in '89 and they wouldn't go in their houses for almost a week. They all slept in the park. Are the buildings so unsafe in Mexico and Central America that they teach them to go and stay outside? I was always taught that you stay indoors because falling power lines are more likely than the door frame giving in.
