[ctonious]

When I was living in San Francisco, I heard what someone told me was a true story about an earthquake in Seattle. When it started rumbling, the people in an office looked around in panic - not knowing what to do. A guy suddenly yelled out "I'm from San Francisco! We stand in doorways!!" Another guy immediately yelled out "I'm from Houston! Where do we stand??!!"

[Elliott Jackalope]

I really like that whole "Stand in a doorway" story. I was in the Loma Prieta quake of '89. Had a really good view out the window of an office I was standing in. The ground was rolling around like it had turned into a thick liquid. I saw waves rolling down the street that looked like waves rolling across the ocean. The distance from the top of the waves to the bottom of the waves must have been at least two feet.

At the time I was thinking "gotta get under a desk or in a doorway". Just one problem, the ground was shaking so hard it took everything in me just to keep from being flung about the office. I was just rooted to the ground, kinda like hanging on to a surfboard, "land surfing". If I had even tried to take a step in any direction I would have ended up falling down, hard.

So anyway, that whole "get in a doorway or under a desk" story is just one of those things to make you feel better about having a chance in a big quake, IMHO. If it's a bad enough quake to bring a building down, chances are that you aren't going to be doing much moving about, you're going to be doing everything you can do just to keep from being bounced around like a ping-pong ball.