Why you don't feel earthquakes that others do

Senior Features Writer

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April 16, 2024 9:06 AM PT

Joy Lee has lived in the L.A. area for her entire life, but the 48-year-old says she hasn’t felt an earthquake in almost two decades. “Sometimes I will be on social media and suddenly my friends will start commenting on the earthquake, and I will realize I felt nothing,” she said.

One time she thought an earthquake may have happened after seeing a strange ripple in the tank of her 5-gallon water dispenser. It was “like the scene where the glass of water vibrates in ‘Jurassic Park.’”

As usual, she went to social media to confirm her suspicions. Indeed, there’d been a quake that, once again, she didn’t feel.

Lee is what we’ve dubbed a “never-feeler,” someone who never — or very, very rarely — registers the rumblings of the earth beneath their feet.

After two early January SoCal quakes (a 4.1 magnitude on New Year’s Day and a 4.2 four days later), The Times conducted an informal survey to find out more about the chronically earthquake-oblivious. Lee was among the readers to share their feelings — or lack thereof.

On Tuesday, a 2.8 magnitude quake was reported in View Park-Windsor Hills at 8:19 a.m. While this one would be considered a “light” earthquake — too low to trigger the shake alert app — more than 170 people shared did-you-feel-it reports within 30 minutes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Of 116 Times questionnaire respondents, about a quarter described themselves as avowed never-feelers: people who, despite living in the L.A. area for between two and 42 years, had never felt even the slightest quiver no matter the magnitude. Meanwhile, 61% reported that, while they had indeed felt the earth tremble at some point — especially if the quake was on the bigger side — they haven’t felt one in a very long time.

Julian Lozos, an associate professor of geophysics at Cal State Northridge, said there is solid earthquake science behind why some folks feel quakes while others don’t in any given situation.

“In general, you’re more likely to feel earthquakes if you’re sitting still [instead of] moving around, you’re more likely to feel them if you’re awake [instead of] asleep — obviously — but it also depends on where you are. There have been earthquakes in the San Fernando Valley, for example, that I’ve felt while people just on the other side of the Santa Monica [Mountains] haven’t.

“And it would definitely depend on where you live in terms of there being a constant source of noise or movement, like living in an apartment building where there’s constantly other stuff going on versus a single-family home. In that case you’re more likely to either think that’s what it is or, more likely, to just have developed the ability to tune it out.”

Indeed, Lee thinks her location may play a role in her earthquake ignorance. “[I] only have been quake-oblivious since moving into our home in Mt. Washington 17 years ago,” she said. “I think it has to do with the geology that our house sits on.” Linnea Stanley, a four-year Angeleno who lives in Bel-Air but used to live in Beachwood Canyon by the Hollywood sign, wondered if she never feels earthquakes because “maybe I live far enough [away] from them?” Isabel Corazon, a 37-year-resident born and raised in L.A. and currently residing in downtown’s Historic Core, believes she may have grown immune.

“I do find it strange since I’m hypersensitive to how others are feeling at any given moment in addition to how I’m feeling at any given moment,” Corazon said. “I’m highly intuitive and perceptive. So I’m honestly confused as to why I never feel earthquakes. ... Maybe when you have generational time spent in L.A., you become like one with the earthquake?”

Lozos, whose area of expertise is computer simulations (“I make fake earthquakes on my computer”), has a keen interest in the never-feeler phenomenon, having observed it firsthand in the classroom.

“I always ask my students if they’ve felt an earthquake, and most of them say they have — but some of them say they haven’t,” Lozos said. “And I think some of that has to do with how much are they even thinking about it? I’m thinking about earthquakes most of the time, because it’s my job, right? So I’m more likely to feel something and go, ‘OK, was that an earthquake? Or was that my neighbors, or was that the fire station across the street?’ Whereas people who aren’t necessarily thinking about it all the time ... chances are they probably have felt earthquakes and just never thought to look into it. It’s like how much does it come to your mind to begin with?”

The never-feelers’ theories

Generally, the survey respondents who don’t feel earthquakes had three main reasons. A third of them, including Lee, cited their physical location.

Lozos explained that differing locations — even within the same building — can make a huge difference in how a quake is felt. He used his personal experience at a 2014 earthquake conference in Japan as an example. “It was lunchtime and they had half of us at a fourth-floor restaurant and half of us at an 18th-floor restaurant in the same hotel when a magnitude 4.9 earthquake hit,” he said. “The people on the fourth floor felt a very sort of abrupt shaking — a jolty shaking — and the people on the 18th floor felt a lot more swaying. ... [which] one might perceive as the wind versus an earthquake.”

Others theorized they had become desensitized to the jolts, jiggles and sways of the earth, due to medical conditions (from ADHD-induced wiggling legs to frequent seizures), previous earthquakes or even where they grew up. “As a native Seattleite, I have spent A LOT of my life on boats (rowboats, ferry boats, speed boats, crew shells, kayaks, canoes, etc.),” wrote Colleen Davis. “Therefore, I am very used to the feeling of having sea legs and having water rolling under me. Who knows if there is a connection? But it makes as much sense as any other theory, I guess.”

A bar chart shows the results of an informal poll conducted by the L.A. Times. 33% of responders said their location or place is why they don't feel earthquakes. The second most common theory was not paying enough attention (29%). A quarter mentioned they might be immune after experiencing big earthquakes or other stimuli.

Lozos said most earthquakes are small and last for a very short period of time — a second or less. “And there are so many other things that can cause movement like that, that it might not even be something you think to check. So, later on, when the earthquake is on the news, or is exploding on [X] or BlueSky or Mastodon or wherever you are, you have to step back and think, ‘Did I feel something earlier? What time was that?’ There’s probably a lot of that.”

A surprising number of respondents (to me at least) simply copped to being too distracted to notice. “I honestly feel like I just don’t pay attention,” explained Tess Steplyk of her six-year streak of quake obliviousness. “But most of the time I am quietly working from home. So I think it’s a skill!”

Not paying attention is what Lozos thinks is probably at work for people who haven’t experienced a single shaker. “I’d be willing to bet that if they’re adults who have lived in California their whole lives,” he said, “they probably have [felt an earthquake] and just didn’t realize what it was. Also, if you haven’t felt one before, you probably have this mental image, like it’s going to be this big obvious thing. And, most of the time, they’re not.”

Didn’t feel it? Don’t be surprised.

Since 1999, the USGS has been running a postquake questionnaire called “Did You Feel It?” It asks people to detail the intensity of shaking and report damage. According to Vince Quitoriano, the program’s developer, of the more than 450,000 Los Angeles County responses since launch, about 96% reported having felt a quake. Using its questionnaire data, the USGS has found that fewer than 10% of people are likely to feel a quake with moderate shaking if they are outside and in motion (say, walking or driving), while roughly 85% of people at rest and located on the higher floor of a building will feel the same intensity quake.

However, the survey wasn’t designed to gather granular data from those who didn’t feel anything, says survey geophysicist David Wald, the scientist behind and manager of the Did You Feel It? system (who created it in the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge quake). “What’s really unfortunate is that to answer the questionnaire to say you didn’t feel it just takes one answer,” Wald said. “And then you’re done. ... We get their location, we get the actual intensity [of the quake] where they are based on other people’s reports and we typically know what story [of a building] they were in. But we haven’t put a lot of effort into [exploring] the boundaries of the have-not-felt because that’s such a small fraction.”

Even so, Wald isn’t surprised that some people who have lived in the L.A. area for decades would say they have never felt a single earthquake.

“On the scientific level, I would say that there are definitely so many circumstances that it would absolutely make sense that they didn’t,” he said. “It could have been that [during] one they should have felt they were in a car or in a small building and far enough away where only half the people would have felt it and they were watching TV loudly or whatever. ... So even if you lived in L.A., in the early ’90s, you might be in the situation where you wouldn’t have felt an earthquake.”

Hacks for the never-feeler

Given how much where you are, what you’re doing and what you’ve previously experienced can affect your ability to feel any given earthquake, what’s an on-edge Angeleno to do? And can the never-feelers somehow train themselves to become more quake-conscious? When I put that question to Lozos, his (half-joking) response was: “I think the easy answer is to become an earthquake scientist!”

Since that’s not exactly a workable option for most (and even if it were, it certainly couldn’t happen overnight), here are some of the life hacks sent along in the responses to The Times survey. While I can’t personally vouch for them (well, except for the chandelier one — a delicate oyster-shell chandelier in the bedroom serves as the earthquake early-warning system in my home) and nothing should take the place of actual earthquake preparedness, below are some of the clever cues folks rely on to clue them in when they aren’t personally noticing the earth move.

“We have a chandelier that sways when we have an earthquake. I’ll look up at that if I think we are having one.” — Maribel Diaz
“I have wind chimes.” — Bonnie Howard
“[I rely on an] under-the-cabinet wine glass rack. And the best life hack of all — my three cats! All three will perk up, usually meerkat-style, and all look the same direction.” — Lyndsi Gutierrez
“I use a bobblehead from a sports team, because why not?!” — Lakshmivallabh Pandalapalli
“I have hanging plants in many rooms of my house, and if the plants are moving that’s my sign that something went down.” — Amanda Rodriguez
“Mini-blinds and the pool water are clues for the larger ones further away. Twitter and Facebook are helpful for the smaller ones nearby.” — Angel Zobel-Rodriguez
“In San Francisco, I had a dresser in our bedroom with handles that lay against the drawer face. If I heard them start to rattle, I knew there was an earthquake happening.” — R.W. Ziegler
“[My] USGS auto alerts [are] set to a low threshold, like a 3.0 on the scale, in a large radius around L.A. They’re sent instantly! Never fails.” — Jackson Finnerman
“Dogs. My dogs know when one is coming. So they let me know.” — Eileen O’Farrell