HOW AN EARTHQUAKE LOOKS AND FEELS,

Otago Witness, Issue 2363, 8 June 1899, Page 56

HOW AN EARTHQUAKE LOOKS AND FEELS,

(Lippincotfs Magazine, U.S.)

Shortly before midnight on March 30, 1898, a citizen of the town of Sonoma, about 40 miles north of San Francisco, stepped out of a public-house on the village plaza and paused a moment on the threshold to enjoy a perfect moonlight night before wending his way home. Not a breath of air stirred the foliage of the tall Lombardy poplars that flanked the lofty spire of the Methodist church directly across the street, <tnd nature seemed buried in profound slumber. As he stood there, looking about, the cspire of the church began to dance and rock in a most extraordinary way right before his amazed and terrified eyes, and the Lombardy poplars lashed the air as if swept by a cyclone. At the same time the citizen found himself dancing an involuntary jig on the sidewalk, while everything else in tlu> village was apparently dancing, too, m the craziest way. Vague crashing.? of crockery and the shivering of glass windows startled his ears, and from the bowels of the earth issued a deep rumbling, like subterranean thundei. H> turned pale as he realised that he was in the midst of the liveliest kind of a California sarthquake.

At the same time, five miles south, a young lady, lying in bed gazing out of her ojjen window." saw a row of lolfcy jnimtrpfta

nod their elevated heads at each other, then ' exchange profound obeisances with the politeness of knights and dames in a stately minuet. Her scream was heard half a mile away. At the same time, too, a farmer two miles to the south-west, being awakened hy some mysterious agitation, ' opened his eyes, and to his consternation found himself looking from his bed out into the open moonlit country. The whole side of his house had fallen out. At the same time, j again, I myself, shaken like jelly, awoke to find my wife sitting up in bed, and the room "full of children and domestics, huddled together like sheep, white as chalk, and wringing their hands in terror. They had rushed to the chamber of the head of the family, as if he could do anything. | That was a- great shake — the trembler of I March 30, 1898. As I lay in bed my news- j paper instinct led me to note the duration of the shock by the night clock on the bureau. It was just three minutes. It seemed 30. The shock itself did not continue so long, but three minutes elapsed ere the oscillations caused by the shock ceased.'! When it is considered that the average j earthquake lasts only about 10 seconds, the severity of this shock may be realised. I During these three minutes the house shook and rattled as if the roof might come crashing down upon us at any moment. In the morning, when we made a tour of inspection through the dwelling, we found that everything on brackets and shelves on the east and west walls had been thrown to the floor, while most of the articles on the north and south walls were undis- | turbed. Vases and bri< -a-brac by which ; my wife set great store were smashed. The ! earthquake had kindly cleaned out the par- i lour chimney foi us, though il had unkindly shaken down a pile of hoot on a fawncoloured rug before- the fireplace and sent broken bricks down out of the flue clear across the floor and under the piano at the other' end of the room. As foi the mural ornaments of that unhappy parlour, they were a wreck on the iloor. . . .

This p t <rticulai earthquake, while not the severest on record, was sufficiently violent to attract wide notice by the press of San Francisco and adjacent towns. Its area was remarkably limited. The centre of disturbances extended from the east to the west along the north shore of San Pablo Bay, which is a continuation of the Bay of San Francisco, and was only about I*s miles long by three or four wide. It was in this slender zone that the damage was done, though the wings of the shock extended a radius of 50 miles round about. The greatest damage was at the United States Navy Yard at Mare Island, on theeast shore of San Pablo Bay. Here a num--ber of buildings were either shaken down or badly cracked, and the loss to GJovernment property at the time was estimated at from 500,000 tp 2,0C0,000dol ; the inside esfcimatß is" probably nearex the mark. The cruiser Charleston was on the dry dock" at the time, and it was supposed that she had escaped without injury; but when the' ( Spanish war broke out and she was ordered ! to Manila to leinforce Dewey and inciden- i tally to capture the Ladrone Islands on the way, it was found that she had been slightly damaged, and the expedition was delayed several days in consequence.

Directly in the seismic zone was the Tubbs ranch, on what is known as Tubbs's Island. This is a reclaimed salt marsh, and the land is accordingly soft and none too solid : the passage of a railroad train makes it tremble. At the time of the shock, the foreman of the ranch, J. H. Garrett, was asleep with his wife in the second storey of his house. His awakening was rude. First the headboard of the bed fell in upon him ; then the footboard followed suit ; the middle suddenly developed a pair of hinges, and the article shut up on the astonished couple like a folding bed.. To cap the climax, the bureau stalked away from the wall and fell upon the -heap. Garrett and his wife crawled out of the wreck, rushed downstairs, and tried to escape by the front door, but it was wedged tight and could not be forced open. They finally made their exit through a gaping hole in the side of the house, and when they emerged into the moonlight a startling spectacle met their eyes. Every windmill was down ; a small- spraying tank, which had been left before the door,- had been moved fifty feet away, as if drawn by a rope. The waters -of Sonoma Creek had been dashed over the banks 100 ft on either" side, and a tank full of water had been emptied of its contents without apparently having been moved an inch. The ground on this ranch, and indeed throughout the whole zone of the shock, trembled more or less for several weeks afterwards, and there were occasional shocks for two months, though they were light. »All sorts of pranks were played with wells and springs by this trembler. The artesian wells round about Sonoma were set flowing copiously, and the increased flow continues to this day. Some surface wells were dried up. A previous earthquake, five years ago, moved a spring from my neighbour's ranch across the line upon my own, and here it stayed until this 'last trembler picked it up, so to say, and carried it half-way up an adjacent hill, where it very soon dried up, notwithstanding my strenuous efforts to keep it alive.