Two Saturdays ago I was sitting at my desk when my chair moved, my fob watch swung on its’ chain and a picture on the wall gyrated. Earthquake!! I looked up the USGS site and found that it was a 5,6 quake centred near Fortuna which is to the north of us who live in Fort Bragg.  It was a magnitude 5.6 earthquake and was reported at 8:53 p.m. on California’s North Coast. The quake was felt to the north in Eureka and also to the south. There were no reports of damage or injuries and there was no tsunami. The map below shows just how much seismic activity there is in the Fortuna area.

Earthquake activity around Fortuna

And this map shows just how much seismic activity there is in Northern California on an ongoing basis:

Eathquake Activity in Northern California and Nevada

Me being an auditor sat there wondering just how much, how bad, how many big ones there have been along the Mendocino Coast. I remembered that Thad Van Buren’s book, “Belonging to Places” had a table in it showing earthquake events over a long period of time:

Earthquake Events

We are on the coast so my next question was, “And Tsunamis?” Again Thad Van Buren came to the rescue with this table:

Tsunami Events Table

Having absorbed that I DEFINITELY decided that I was better off here vs the East Coast – Hurricanes, or middle America – Tornadoes.