earthquake hits during live news broadcast

[MineralMan]

11. In 50 years of living in California, I experienced many earthquakes.

My first one was when I was five years old. I was asleep in bed, but found myself shaken out of the bed onto the floor during a big quake in Kern County, some 75 miles from where I lived.

I went through many earthquakes, and sort of got used to them. by the time the 1991 Northridge earthquake hit, my reaction had lessened to simply sitting where I was and waiting it out. My new wife in 1991, who grew up in the Midwest, wasn't so calm during that quake, which was her first. We were 150 miles from its epicenter, but it knocked some things off shelves, and a couple of pictures on the wall hit the floor. She screamed.

Still, every earthquake is an unsettling thing. I mean, the floor is suppose to be still, right?