Rick Roberts fun experience
Owen times
Rick Roberts fun Earthquake experience 25/12/15
Rick Roberts had a fun time in the 5.9 Whittier earthquake. It was fun to him because he wasn’t scared, and it seemed like it was a roller coaster. It started at 7:42 a.m. in the San Gabriel Valley on October 1,1987. Rick Roberts is my father. He was on the 15th floor of the Union Bank Building in downtown Los Angeles when the quake hit. He said it felt like the building was being shaken by a giant back and forth for about three minutes. Books were falling on him. He was trying to get everyone under the staircase door. He also said to his co-workers, “You do know that usually after an earthquake there is a aftershock.” 3...2...1… BOOM! The whole building had a bigger and unexpected shaking motion. Rick for some weird reason was not afraid. Rick’s boss, right when the aftershock happened, screamed and started to run. But his boss realized that his employees were watching, so he suddenly started walking instead of running.
After the quake there was no damage to any part of the building or to himself, but there was damage to other places in LA. The aftershock did most of the damage. It was a magnitude of 5.3. This aftershock broke chimneys and windows. This all happened because of a fault in the earth’s crust. A fault is when two plate boundaries slip past each other and cause an earthquake. This is called a Transform Boundary. Some other things that he remembered were when he was in his cubicle in the building and it seemed like it might have collapsed on him, but it didn’t. Rick majored in hydrology, so he knew that the aftershock was coming. So that’s why he braced himself around the staircase railing and encouraged others to do so too.
Rick would do all of this because he would need to protect his family. Rick suggested that you should prepare for an earthquake by keeping a storage of food and water for a week that is not perishable. He would have it in a place that is easy to get to. You would want to stay warm and safe in a secure place. You should secure things that might fall on you that might be dangerous if they fall on you. Never let your gas tank get below one quarter because you might need to evacuate. You should always have a plan. Keep a generator. For example we had four days of no power and we didn’t have a generator. It was bad. Don’t be like us. In conclusion the whittier earthquake was a catastrophic incident that did a lot of damage to buildings and schools.