Michael's+Story

My family and I were in California to see our cousins, who we have not seen for over five years. We did all sorts of things; we went to the movies, to a carnival, and even to this really neat science museum. In the science museum, were all kinds of displays of artifacts from all the back to 10,000 BC! There were all kinds of dinosaur fossils, models and a cool tornado simulator. One of my cousins took us to one wing of the museum which had a Pompeii exhibit. The next exhibit was mostly about earthquakes. There was a huge wall of all the earthquakes that occurred in the world so far, and a large __seismograph__ in the center of the room. We left the science museum with a lot of new knowledge in our heads, hoping to find a place to eat. We ended up going to a fast-food restaurant were my cousins work at called Out & In. We were driving back to their hotel room where we were going to stay for the next week, when a sudden vibration shook the car. All cars stopped in the road, leaving a huge mess. "What was that?" My sister asked in fear. At the end of her sentence, more shaking occurred each one getting more and more violent. "Earthquake!" Yelled a person. After that, everything was a blur. People were running in every direction, screaming in fear. As the ground cracked, past knowledge flooded my head. "The first rule of Earthquake safety is to get somewhere away from buildings". I later experienced it when three building collapsed. While I was running away in terror, I got lost and had no idea where anybody was. After the shaking had stopped, I ran to a small field located behind a building. Then, I got in a high place on top of a rock hoping that could see anything. But alas, all I saw was collapsed buildings and piles of rubble. I called out my cousin’s names and my families, but nobody responded. When I almost gave up all hope, I heard a whimper from afar, but just enough so I could hear. I located the sound and found all my cousins and family, except for one. They told me my brother was caught under a fallen billboard, but still alive. All together, we lifted it just enough for my oldest cousin to go in and pull him out. "It looks like a broken leg" He said. "But it could be worse". We went back to the museum, for we took a wild guess that it was built to survive an earthquake, and we were right. I turned around and found the still working seismograph. It was pretty cool, because I looked at the __seismogram__ that it produced and it was rated on the __moment magnitude scale__ to be a __magnitude__ 8.9! It also showed the arrival time of the __primary waves__, __secondary waves__, and __surface waves__. As the ambulances arrived, we all huddled into one ambulance next to my brother. We thought it was all over, when I remember some facts that I learned in school. That an earthquake can cause __aftershocks__ and a large wave called a __tsunami__! I told my parents, and they told me not to worry, and that were now too far away from the __epicenter__ to be effected by aftershocks. They also told me that were near the coast line, so a tsunami can't touch us. As we drove to the hospital, I watched out the window in awe. One house probably a farm house, was half sunken into the ground. Before the earthquake, I remember reading about it, and it is called __liquefaction__. It mostly affects Heavy and dense objects, lying directly above sand of soft soils. As I take my eyes off the house, my eyes saw something else. Across the horizon, I saw the ocean and panicked. "I thought we weren’t going any were near the coast!" "We have to," he said "where do you think the hospital is?" Once we arrived, we rushed in and waited for three hours. One of the doctors came out saying that he would be fine, and that he would be stable and ready to eave in two days. Some vacation this turned out to be.