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Just to clarify for others, the numbers used in the above post are shindo-scale which are a location-dependent measurement of actual movement. They are used much more in Japan versus magnitude numbers.

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i used to live very close to a fault in Los Angeles County, and the numbers i remember from the 80s and 90s don't seem to correlate to the numbers i hear now - i left CA in 2006. The running joke with my CA friends is "don't even tweet/post about it unless it's a 7.0" whereas a 7.0 would mean widescale destruction back when i lived there. I remember the Apple Valley Quake, it was a rolling quake, and it was somewhere between a 4.8 and a 5.4. It derailed trains, and caused a bunch of property damage. I had a ham radio at the time and i was tuned into two of the biggest repeaters in southern california (one being "the nut") and listened to the damage reports and movement of emergency crews.

We were quite far from that one, and it wasn't violent, but it still caused property damage and power outages due to shorted lines.

So i see a 7.3 magnitude, and since i no longer deal with earthquakes (just floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes), i have no frame of reference for how bad that is. Gauging off the running joke above, it's gotta be somewhat bad, right?

I'm no expert, but it looks like the Apple Valley big earthquakes were centered on land, and these Fukushima are centered off the coast. I would assume the closer to the center, the worse the damage, so perhaps that could explain it?

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