I was working at Sandia (National Lab in Livermore) in the High Pressure Laboratory when I noticed that the building was starting to move. As I looked at the overhead lights which hung down about 6 feet from the ceiling on rods, I noticed that they were swinging from side to side. I did what all good people do in a quake, I dove under my desk. However, it only took me a few seconds to realize that the quake had started a very large water chamber, which was used for volume measurement, to spill water over onto the floor. In that laboratory we had many electrical outlets on the floor and realizing that water and electricity were not a good mix, I chose to run outside. After the quake subsided somewhat I went over to building 912 and I could see through the outside bricks all the way to the inside of the building. I proceeded to contact my wife who said that the quake had created a huge motion in our swimming pool and a lot of the water splashed out, but she was OK and the kids were fine.

My mother lived in a mobile home in Springtown so when travel permitted, I drove out to see how she was doing. As I drove into the trailer park, I was met with more television people than I have ever seen in one spot. As I remember, there were about 100 trailers in the park and well over half were off of their foundations. When I arrived at my mother's trailer it was at an angle down about 10 degrees as it had fallen off the front jacks but not the back. Power was off all over the park except for the glare of the TV floodlights. Everywhere I walked, the reporters were interviewing very excited senior citizens who were all exclaiming that they almost died, were going to move away, or why had the government let this happen....definitely the place to be for a reporter. Over the next few days, the park was deluged with contractors who knew every way in the world to make your trailer much safer and at a very expensive price. We found out later that the easiest, least expensive way was to put the trailer on cement blocks instead of the tall metal stands and then to turn every other one the opposite direction to pick up the various loads. All in all, it was an exciting time. I am still not sure that my house hasn't suffered some damage that I am not aware of...yet.

Dick Jones
Livermore