Aug.31 at 11:44 am

Bernie from Phoenix says:
When I lived in Cali I experienced a few earthquakes but nothing that caused any severe damage where I lived. Luckily, I never lived near the epicenter of any earthquakes. Anyways, they are what you would probably imagine. Lots of shaking and rumbling. The first one I was in was scary, but after that they kinda became routine. Just get to a doorway and wait for the shaking to end.

Aug.31 at 11:50 am

Toney Blare says:
I was in one in Tokyo last year, on the subway stopped at a platform. At first we thought someone was rocking the car, trying to pry open the doors ala nyc, but we noticed the electric wires wobbling, then the murmurs and cellphone punching of the people around us. Finally someone said, ‘earthquake’ in English for us. I don’t know, I don’t think Mehmet Okur would bat a heavily browed eye over 5 seconds of a waterbed effect…christ, that’s very close to a very ill image.

Aug.31 at 11:50 am

Allen says:
Yeah, plenty of em out here in Southern California. They’re not so scary. I find them kind of fun when they’re happening. And I doubt they would really cancel the game like you say, unless it was above a 6 (like the Bay Area World Series quakes in, um, 91? I don’t feel like looking it up). You only get worried when it keeps going and you start wondering “when is this going to end?” and “is it getting stronger?” but that rarely happens. Another thing is, quakes make a lot more damage in places where the infrastructure is not modernized, like third world countries, or rural areas.

Aug.31 at 11:59 am

winston and the telescreen says:
you guys have got to do something on Barkley, his comments on religion and gay rights and how to govern….hilarious, yet insightful
I’ll tell you right now I’d vote him in in a second (of course I’ve got the terminator as my governor so sir charles as governor doesnt seem all that far-fetched to me)
its odd to me that I completely agree with Charles Barkleys views on everything so far
I never would have guessed

Aug.31 at 12:15 pm

iverose says:
this is what dengate has to say:
“The U.S. team meal room was all shook up moments ago. So much so that young Dwight Howard literally jumped away from a plate of pizza on the table in front of him. “Yeah that scared me,” Howard said when we all agreed that, yes, the room had indeed moved and everybody was safe after experiencing a small earthquake here in Tokyo. For a few of us, it was our first encounter with seismic activity, but others weren’t looking forward to any after shocks. “I’m not going up to the 12th floor now,” one player’s mother said.” http://aol.nba.com/usabasketball/wbc_blog_060818.html

Aug.31 at 12:27 pm

Sam Rubenstein says:
I slept through one in New York as a kid, but it wasn’t major. My brother was at UCLA for grad school, but he transfered back east after his first year cause the quakes scared him so much.

Aug.31 at 12:35 pm

Ryan Jones says:
A 4.8 earthquake is nothing more than a foot massage. Feels kinda nice, actually… And forget about governor — based on the guy we’ve got in office now, I’m guessing Barkley is actually overqualified to be president. But I’d vote for him twice.

Aug.31 at 12:46 pm

Homie says:
I’ve been in two…both relatively minor, although one in 2001 did do some damage in Seattle. It was very noticeable in our office tower, the windows were wobbling and you could feel the building move, but nothing was damaged.

Aug.31 at 12:51 pm

Dbomb says:
Living in socal you can feel earthquakes all the time. The most I’ve seen happen is something fall off of a table. In San Diego we don’t get that bad of quakes, and usually I sleep through them when they happen at night. I’ll wake up and everyone will ask, “Did you feel that”.

Aug.31 at 1:05 pm

Marcel Mutoni says:
i experienced a minor one last summer here in Ottawa. it wasn’t quite as nice as a foot massage, though.

Aug.31 at 1:11 pm

Alex says:
Is the players hotel in Tokyo? This arena that they’re playing at…would you classify it as being like in suburban Tokyo or it’s own town?

Aug.31 at 2:05 pm

Magic Chicken says:
Living in LA, quakes are common-place. That 4.8 is probably no even enough to make some dishes fall, so there would be no need to stop the game … even in the states. In fact 4.8 is so small, that I’ve lived through after shocks and pre-shocks that were bigger. In 92 or 93, I lived in Plam Spring, and we had a 5.1 pre-shoch (earth quake b4 the bigger one), a 6.3 earth quake, and a 5.3 aftershock, all on the same day, and all barely a mile away from the San Andreas Fault. 1 (old) person died from a heart attack, and a few people reported a few things falling out of cabinets and off wals … basically nothing major. Some people were concerned that this earth quake was going to trigger “the BIG one”, but nuthing happened. One thing that was cool about this earth quake though was that I was at the local sportspark when it happened (basically 4 little’league diamonds), and you could literally see the shock waves roll towards you on the ground. It wasnt’ big, but defintiely cool. (I was scared though, since i was only 9 at the time. lol) ‘87 or ‘88, 5.8 in Whittier (L.A.)
‘94 in Lancaster & Big Bear: 6.8 and 7.1 and the one everyone probably heard about was the North Ridge earth quake. In retrospect, hardly any damage occured in any of these, and the arenas were all in fine shape after each. 4.5 in Tokyo is nothing.

Aug.31 at 2:20 pm

Myung says:
lang, i felt one about two years ago here in your home state of GA. first of my life. i think it was about 5 AM? i heard the epicenter was somewhere in alabama. it felt like a big semi truck was driving in front of my house. the house sort of shook for a minute, but it wasn’t anything more than that. i actually had no idea what it was…and then i saw on the news a few hours later that an earthquake had hit atlanta (obviously lightly). i’m sure if i wasn’t totally knocked out, i might have been a little frightened. but i was so sleepy that i woke up, wondered what it was, and went right back to sleep.

Aug.31 at 2:31 pm

Myung says:
after reading through my last post, i realize that if i weren’t such a fan of sir charles, that i could’ve made an easy (albeit very lame) joke…but…no sir.

Aug.31 at 2:33 pm

A Zapata says:
I’ve been in too many to even remember… My father was in the air force.. and he was stationed in northern japan at the time.. and, i wanna say 1994, a HUGE earthquake and many many aftershocks shook the north part of the island. It measured about 7.8 on the richter scale i believe and it was pretty scary to say the least

Aug.31 at 4:54 pm

Elyse says:
The depth underground at which the plates are where the quake occurs also affects the strength. For example, you could have a quake 3 miles underground that is a five point something, and that will just feel like rolling. Or you could have a five point something 500 feet underground and that will be serious movement… like the northridge quake that was a 6.1… that was close to the surface, and was very strong.

Aug.31 at 11:18 pm

dre says:
i lived through this… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi-Chi_earthquake lots of damaged and collapsed structures and buildings throughout the country, including a 15-story apartment building a few blocks from my house that collapsed into rubbles! another bad one in recent years happened during the construction of the Taipei 101 (currently the tallest building in the world), which caused a scaffolding / crane near the top of the building break and fall down onto the intersection below immediately landing on top of a couple cars and instantly killing the folks inside. in away it’s good it happened really early in the morning where there was hardly any traffic or people, because that’s usually a very busy area. think of times square in ny. we get tons of quakes here all the time, we are pretty immune to them now. even when it shakes kinda hard and you can feel, we just shrug it off.