David in Alaska is fine.

[David Thomas]

At 1:30 am we woke up to a 7.1 quake. It went on for a while. Everyone was really awake. Walked down the street to see if the residents of the burning house needed anything. They didn’t. Our teenager made snacks, we Facebooked, and eventually went back to sleep. Then a loud explosion at 6 am signified that another neighbor’s house had blown up from a natural gas leak. The entire house was in flames.

We packed up a few things and were driving away just as the police came through to tell people to leave.

Our house is fine – I built it to or beyond code requirements, and we’re staying with friends until the gas company fixes all the leaks.

A few BPLers emailed me or asked on FB so I thought I’d say, “We’re fine. We’re glad no one was injured.”

The pic is of one of the burning houses from our Quidditch pitch. It’s about 25 feet from our property. Cinders and chunks of fiberglass batting were blow into our forest. I’m glad there’s some snow on the ground. 

[Anonymous]

Glad to hear you and your family are ok.  Waking up while a 7.1 quake is going on and natural gas explosions nearby, must be a bit disconcerting.

[jscott]

Great to hear that you’re all safe David. Hopefully things will turn better for your neighbor. That’s a pretty good temblor, depending on how deep or shallow it was…no, that’s a powerful temblor no matter what.

[Katherine .]

Wow. Glad you and your family are OK.

[BlackHatGuy]

Glad to hear it David. Hope the neighborhood gets back to something resembling normalcy soon.

[Stephen Barber]

Good to hear you and yours are okay. Stay safe up there!

[Donna C]

Glad everything is safe and sound for you and your family.

[Philip Tschersich]

We sure felt it down in Kodiak too. I was awake and sitting in bed when it hit. About 10 seconds of concerted swaying, but no damage. I wonder what that would have to feel like to bust all those gas lines. Yowza.

I’m happy for you and sad for your neighbors. Don’t they have automatic seismic shutoff valves or something?

[David Thomas]

Phillip: No automatic shut-offs, the family in the first explosion just scampered quickly out of the house as the gas leaked and then made a small explosion.  They were cheap, little 2BD/1BA low-rent houses and I’m wondering if someone scrimped on their construction (I know exactly where all the 12×5/8″ J bolts are in my house, hooked to the 5/8″ rebar which in turn has more than the minimum overlap and is properly wired together, on 24-inch centers all around the perimeter of my house holding it to the foundation) or, since three next to each other had gas explosions, did a NG line rupture underground and maybe feed pressurized NG into a sewer line?  4.5 hours later, at 6 am, when we were awakened by a large explosion (house chunks landed in our forest 200 feet away from the former house), the neighboring houses had long since been evacuated.  They then widened the evacuation to include us (although the houses were 25 feet from our property, our cabin is 200 feet away, garage, 300 and house 375 feet away from the explosions / fires) but we were already packed and leaving at that point.

6 pm last night, the roads to our house were reopened, we returned, I got the freezers and laptops plugged into a generator and a few hours later, we got grid power back on.

As our 15-year-old exclaimed last night after the 7.1 earthquake, multiple explosions, three house fires, evacuation, a day as refugees, utilities tearing the streets up, and returning to convert the house to run on a generator, “That was a memorable 24 hours.”

I’m sorry about the families that lost everything (there were immediately GoFundMe campaigns set up and offers of anything they needed on the local FB buy-sell-trade page), but very thankful there were no injuries among those families, EMS or the utility workers involved.

[Nick Gatel]

Dave, good to hear your family is okay. After a 6.0 at our house in 1986, I installed a seismic shut-off valve at our gas meter, since we are less than 10 miles from the San Andreas fault. I know it works because if I accidentally bump into it it shuts off the gas, which is a little bit of a pain to reset.

Down here in So Cal, we are somewhat used to earthquakes. I have been close to the epicenter in quakes measuring 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, and 7.1. The 6.5 was the ’92 Big Bear quake and I was on the top floor of the Hilton in Pasadena. That was scary because the hotel is built on rollers to enable the building to sway back and forth during a quake. Looking out the window with the building swaying is a unnerving feeling.

For those who are interested, I put together a table explaining the Richter classifications.

[Peter H]

That’s terrifying. Glad you all are safe.

[David Thomas]

The day after.

L to R: One charred ruin of a house, a basement/crater, another basement/crater, another charred ruin.  The wooden fence is my property line.

[David Thomas]

Earthquakes can really suck.  So can gas leaks.  Build your houses to code.  Always.  Even if you don’t understand WHY the building / plumbing / electrical code requires something, there’s a good reason.

[Greg Mihalik]

[Jennifer Mitol]

whoa….glad you’re OK david…that seriously sucks for your neighbors…..

[Rex Sanders]

David wrote:

Build your houses to code.  Always.  Even if you don’t understand WHY the building / plumbing / electrical code requires something, there’s a good reason.

+1

A few houses shook up by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in CA collapsed because the owners tried to go “above code”. Too many too big nails in plywood siding made the structure too stiff, and the extra, extra large nail holes caused the plywood to separate from the framing.

Nearby houses, built to code, survived.

David – glad you and your family are safe. Judging from the news reports, you seem to live in one of the hardest hit neighborhoods.

— Rex

[David Thomas]

Rex: Yeah, the epicenter, geologically, was across Cook Inlet.  The epicenter, damage-wise, was a caber-toss from my lot.

My daughter’s classmates are scheming to give all their “Boxtops for Schools” to the kid in their school who lived in one of those houses so he’ll get the pizza at lunch to split with friends at end of the month as a reward.  There are other, more substantial efforts underway for the families as well.  Small towns have their pros and cons.  But coming together in a crisis, large or small, is something they do well.

[D M]

Glad you and yours are ok David. I’ve been thru a few earthquakes while in Los Angeles, not fun.

[Roger Caffin]

Hi David

Um – exciting stuff. Glad you survived. Our nearest quake some years ago was, fortunately, much farther away.

Forgive me, but those ‘craters’ look as though the houses must have been very lightly constructed – yes? I know a F/A explosion is powerful, but there’s almost nothing left.

Cheers

[Ethan A.]

David, glad you and your family are OK and hope the neighbors have a speedy recovery. That must have been pretty scary.

Auto gas shut off valves aren’t expensive – about $250 from what I recall – and can be a real property and life saver. Without one everyone should know where their gas shut off valve is located, have the proper wrench to turn it off and make sure the valve isn’t rusted to the point where it won’t turn. Most of our neighbors in N California had no idea where their valve was located.

I’ve only experienced earthquakes in N California, and missed the biggest recent ones, but even the smaller ones I felt were a reminder of how powerful they can be. A 5.1 mag 20 minutes drive away once sent me sailing far across a smooth floor on a wheeled desk chair. Another shook us out of sleep and felt like a train was passing by.

[Jane Baack]

David,

I was disappointed when you said you wouldn’t be attending the GGG at Coe but now I’m actually relieved you weren’t there but were at home with your family when the earthquake hit so you could help them and your neighbors deal with the aftermath. Happy to hear that your family is OK but very sorry to learn of the explosions at neighbors’ homes.

Jane

[Jeremy and Angela]

@davidinkenai – Glad to hear that your family is OK. Hopefully there won’t be any aftershocks after the 7.1-quake.

[David Thomas]

Roger, while fuel-air explosions can be very powerful, randomly vented gas without good mixing usually doesn’t make the loudest boom.  I’ve been in a few before, and this had, somehow, gotten pretty close to stoichiometric in some decent volume.
Yes, those were the most minimally constructed houses for codes at that time – built inexpensively with “T-111” siding that serves as both shear wall and exterior siding.  Sections of the wall landed on my property, about 45 feet from the house site.  I was tempted to get some ruby slippers and striped stockings, but my teenager informed me that it wouldn’t be in good taste.
I think another way the cheap construction hurt them was in the minimal windows – the bare minimum required to code, no picture windows, no view windows (we, on the water, have fabulous views, people looking though our 13 acres, not so much), because, I suspect, windows are more expensive than wall in both labor and materials.  Also, most of these are rental units – people bought them to rent out, not to live in themselves.  When I’ve been in an exploding dwelling, the windows act like pressure relief valves.

Jane,

I was bumming about missing GGG#8.  I appreciate Ken and others inviting me and I tried to make it work, but for the rest of my CA family, the previous weekend worked better.  You’re right – far better to be at home driving the family to a friend’s house, reassuring them (no, our house is solidly built, we’ll be fine), getting the generator going to save the fish in the freeze, etc.

[Jerry Adams]

hmmm…  I wonder if my walls are attached to the foundation.  Built in 1970 or something.  If we remodeled I might make it earthquake proof.

You’re lucky that fence didn’t fall over : )

[Rex Sanders]

David,

You might find this computer simulation of the earthquake interesting:

https://youtu.be/KdiETNfyaUo

— Rex

[Author]

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