Above is the CNN map of the epicenter. Here is a map of the earthquake’s effects, based on people’s reports of how much shaking they felt. Here is a similar map showing what people felt in Canada. And here is a list of aftershocks.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, I have experienced two earthquakes during my time in Southern California, one of which was literally about a hundred times stronger than your stupid Northeast earthquake. So nyah. :)
My first quake, the really big one, was the Hector Mine earthquake on October 16, 1999, less than two months into my freshman year at USC. That one woke me up at around 3:00 AM, whereupon I immediately jumped across the room, turned on my camcorder and yelled, “Earthquake! Earthquake!” (The camera missed the shaking, but I did get footage of the electricity flashing on and off. Of course, that could be any summer day in California…) That quake was 7.1 on the Richter scale — very big — but its epicenter was quite far away, way out in the desert, and it did very little damage.
My second earthquake occured on September 9, 2001. It was a Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting in the basement of Doheny Library — which had only just reopened after being closed for two years while undergoing, of all things, an earthquake retrofit — when all of a sudden, the bookstacks started to shake, the overhead pipes and lights started swinging back and forth, and the ground very definitely shook. This quake was only a 4.2 (which, because the Richter scale is logarithmic, means it was almost 1,000 times weaker than the Hector Mine quake), but its epicenter was much closer to USC — in the Beverly Hills/West Hollywood area — so the shaking was almost as strong. For me personally, it was much scarier, since I was all alone in a basement surrounded by large metal objects. I haven’t set foot in the basement of Doheny Library since. :) (Although, tragically, the earthquake was by no means the scariest thing that would happen that week. About 36 hours later, the Sept. 11 attacks took place).
