Alyssa's+Story

= **I awoke on a Saturday morning at 5:47 am when my mom screamed "EARTHQUAKE!" Her loud voice woke me up, but it wasn't just her voice that woke me up; it was also the rapid shaking of my house. She grabbed me and held me tight, crying. When I awoke, my room and house was completely destroyed! Everything was on the floor, from clothes hangers to furniture. My dog was barking. . . as always, but she was barking super loud. She was also shaking because she was really scared. Everything was rumbling and tumbling all over the place. I raced downstairs as fast as I could to make sure my grandma was okay. I found her lying in bed sleeping! I couldn't believe that someone could sleep through something as horrible as this earthquake. My phone would NOT stop ringing, so I picked it up, and there were 36 missed calls! They were ALL from my dad; he just wanted to make sure i was all right and unharmed. I called him back, and he was SO relieved! Then, everyone in my family looked outside through the window, and it seemed like the WORLD was ending!! Our house seemed like //__liquefaction__// had happened to us which means that our house was a few feet under the normal height of the ground and our house had sunk into the ground a little bit. My mom didn’t know anything about earthquakes, so I told her that the earthquake caused liquefaction, and that the earthquake’s //__mercalli__// rating was a 9.3 out of a roman numeral 12! She said, “is that good or bad?” She looked confused, so I told her that we were experiencing an EXTREME earthquake! I also said that we were living on the hanging wall of a //__strike-slip fault__// because the ground shifted**. **She said, “ Fault?” and I said “yeah, a //__fault__// is a** ** break in earth's crust where masses of rock slip past each other. ** **I told her that this fault was under __//stress//__, and the type of stress it is under is //__tension .__// She was so scared when all of a sudden the power went out, so I called my dad and his power was out too. Then, t****he call got disconnected and the ferocious earthquake had taken me immediately new that a cell phone tower was down. The whole family huddled up and we all sprinted to our neighbors' house which was a __//base-isolated building//__ ** because it has "springs" under it which makes it sway instead of shake rapidly, and after we were inside the building, we were finally safe. =