Hi Don,

I'm sure you're right about Guerneville being the spot on the map that by itself means nothing. For those who don't know, the Russian River runs right through it and with very little exception, it floods considerably there almost every winter.

I was really surprised about the quake today as I don't recall in recent times Guerneville having any quakes. However, Sonoma County is an odd place. With such a mixture of tectonic and volcanic activity, you tend to see patches of activity here and there, rather than just one single fault. However, the greatest risk is for those of us who live on the alluvial plain from Southern Petaluma to Santa Rosa. Intense shaking here in the past brought Santa Rosa to a pile of rubble in the '06 earthquake and mild damage in a few other quakes.

Here's just one example. In the 1969 quake, my sister had just moved into a new apartment complex. She was out eating when the quake struck and returned home to find her kitchen cabinets above the counter tops, sitting directly on those counter tops and every glass item in them, broken beyond repair.

At the same time as she was out eating, I was watching the news from San Francisco and got a rare glimpse of an anchorman on Channel 7. His eyes got big and wide and he seemed to pause mid sentence and I knew it was a quake long before the words exited his mouth. By that time, my home in Richmond in the hills felt like it was on the ocean. Rather large seismic waves were passing under my house. I heard the bushes that surrounded the front of the house shaking, just before the quake hit.

Mind you, that was only a 5.6 quake and it was felt widely in the Bay Area to Eureka up north. So as they say, its not always the magnitude, most often, its just where it occurs.

So it look like time to start paying attention up here. I keep filling those juice bottles as fast as I use them.

From North of The Golden Gate...Petra Challus