That would qualify as the 'understatement of the day'.
I've felt a 7. I'm in Las Vegas and that thing went off in So Cal. And I mean to tell ya - we FELT it! Hanging speakers whacking the wall, water sloshing out of the pool, etc.
Have you ever seen / read the first hand accounts of the big one in Alaska? Ground in continuous motion for 4 - 5 minutes, etc.?
I could not imagine being really close to something of that immense power. Hard for the mind to comprehend something like that, ya know?
LVM
We felt that one here in Arizona, too... but it was on the desert side of the San Bernardino Mountain range ...
Closest I came was a minor quake in San Diego several years ago. We were on the 4th floor of the Hilton at Mission Bay. My husband woke up before the quake started and jumped out of bed (he has animal instincts) and then the quake started, shook the bed and made the huge lamp in the courtyard start swaying. weird.