Hi John. No problem. I overlooked it. A quick question if I may. Which of the two waves appear to be felt the most and which ones appear to do the most damage. Is it the Rayleigh Wave, or the Love Wave?

I know during the Loma Prieta quake I felt the “P” wave and the “S” although the “S” wave was short lived. After that it was just a whole lot of shaking.

During the Coalinga quake it was towards the end of the quake that I was actually getting a feeling of being seasick. That was the only time that has ever happened.

During the 1964 Niigata quake the shaking was so bad that I just sat down in the middle of the street. Some people even laid down. The thing that amazed me the most was that I could see the street rise and then go back down as if someone was rolling a log under it. When the quake stopped there were no cracks in the part of the street where I was at, but in a part of the same street about 200 yards away it was in pieces with some of the pieces lying on top of one another. It looked as if someone had placed them there.

One apartment building just kind of fell over on its side. Its condition was such that the people climb out of the windows and walked down the wall. At the same time on the other side of the street there was the same kind of apartments and they didn’t move. I don’t know the extent of the internal damage. I’m sure this was more due to the kind of construction and the location, but it still makes me wonder.

I left Elmendorf AFB in Alaska about 8 hours before the quake struck. We flew past the point of no return so we continued to Yokota AB in Japan. When we landed we topped off the fuel tanks while taking on medical supplies and medical personnel. When we got back to Elmendorf and the pilot saw the runway he just said______ you can fill in the blanks, but it looked like a roller coaster ride. We made a most unconventional approach. When I looked back the end of the runway was higher then we were. In base operations the west wall had about a 2-inch gap from top to bottom. You could see daylight through it.

When we left we had to make a down wind take off which didn’t set too good with us. We had the advantage of being empty so it wasn’t that bad, but we did use about 2000 feet more runway then normal. It was the first time I had ever been in a C-130 that made a fighter type take off. When we were about 1000 feet from the end of the runway the pilot pulled the yoke back, sucked the gears up and we were airborne as if someone had kicked us in the tail. The flight engineer asked the pilot who was just a mere captain if he had ever make that type of takeoff before. He said no. It just seemed that it was the most logical way of doing it. There has to be a lesson in there somewhere, but I’ll be danged if I can find it. Take Care…Don in creepy town