The quake that sprung a leak

One minute the ground is firmly beneath your feet and the next, the terra ain't so firma any more. Instead, it's rolling and shaking because Mother Nature just shuddered.

Late Thursday afternoon after a week in which I had almost hourly considered running away from home or, advancing in another direction, as I like to think of it, I had a brief moment of "I’m gonna die!"

I was lying flat on my back in traction at the physical therapist's when the emergency alert alarm went off on my phone. Then the klaxon on other patients and staff cells phones sounded. It was 4:19 p.m. A few seconds later the building began to shake and then shake some more and then shake again.

I could hear exclamations of alarm as others in the building scurried to get under tables or in doorways while I lay basically trapped, shackled as I was with black Velcro straps attached to taught pullies hoisted over metal bars. With my hips suspended several inches off the table and no place to go, I watched the ceiling shimmy. As the dust started to fall, the best I could do was throw my arms over my face to shield my eyes from the falling grime.

And that's when I thought, "I’m gonna die! This stupid ceiling is going to come down and crush me. And when the emergency responders come to dig me out, they are going to find my lifeless, soot covered body in bondage!"

And, then, it was over. The building stood still. The ceiling stopped convulsing. And, the physical therapist came in and released me.

"Are you OK?" he asked.

"Are you kidding me?" I answered spitting out particles of who-knows-what that had made it through my crossed arms into my mouth and checking my phone to get information on the epicenter.

Turns out it was a 5.5 magnitude earthquake on the east shore of Lake Almanor. I got texts from loved ones in Rocklin and Sacramento who felt it. My mother called to see if I was OK. I was. And when I got home, everything there seemed OK too.

I went to bed around 11:30 p.m. and was sleeping soundly when a strange man's voice hollered, "Drop! Cover! Hold on!" It scared the bejesus outta me as when I went to bed, I was the only human home. Before my feet hit the floor the voice was replaced by my cell phone's emergency alert alarm. The dogs started to bark. The cats sprang into action and wham! The house jolted sending me sprawling on the floor and cracking my head on the night stand. It was 3:18 a.m. and for a second time in less than 12 hours I thought, "I’m gonna die!"

And then it was over. The house stood still. The dogs stopped barking. The cats crawled out from under the dresser. I picked myself up, did a walk-through of the house, took two aspirin, checked my phone to see where this latest shaker originated — Canyondam and it was a 5.2 magnitude — and went back to bed because I thought everything was fine. I was wrong.

At 4:07 a.m. the dogs started barking outside my bedroom door. So up I got, turned on the light and opened the door to see a veritable tidal wave of water flowing into the hallway from beneath the laundry room door. I dashed for towels, rolled up the hallway runner, shooed the dogs and went into the laundry where I found myself standing in 2 inches of water that was rising by the second.

Twenty minutes and every single towel in the house later, I was able to ascertain that it was the hot water heater leaking. It was a little askew and it's water connection had apparently been damaged by one or both of the earlier quakes. Thing was I couldn't get to either the tank's shut off valve or its primary water connection. I tried various angels from standing on a foot stool to laying on my belly in the gushing water using every tool I could think of — five different screw drives and a couple of wretches. I stopped short of a hammer and crow bar. My efforts were a big, fat, wet failure.

Dripping wet there were only two things I could think of to do: 1) shut off the water to the entire house and 2) run away from home.

So I packed up all my cares and woe and made it as far as Starbucks. At 5 a.m. after two earthquakes, a flood and probably a concussion it was as good a place to run to as any.

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