At 4:42 AM, we just felt a pretty intense earthquake in Berkeley. The house shook back and forth, causing items to fall from shelves. The duration was perhaps 10 seconds. The first radio reports say it was only a 4.2 magnitude temblor, but it felt much stronger than that to me. Preliminary epicenter is put as "2 miles east/northeast of Oakland" which would be roughly Berkeley, so we were very close. Maybe right on top of the epicenter.

If that's what a 4.2 quake feels like up close, I do not look forward to something truly strong.Of course, it will come. My bet is that this was the Hayward Fault, which we are almost on top of (it runs right through the middle of the UC Berkeley fotball stadium), and we are close enough to hear the fans cheer.

No serious damage reported anywhere so far. So I hope that this is one of those adjustments to stress on the fault line which relieve stress.

Update:

The epicenter is reported to be quite shallow, at 3 miles, which makes it feel stronger. Our gas shutoff valve was triggered, so when the sun comes up, I will have to go turn the gas back on (luckily, I know how to do this). A Safeway supermarket in Berkeley has reported that two of the large pans of galss at the front of the store popped out and smashed. Had the store been open, shoppers and checkout clerks almost certainly would have been injured, according to the store manager who called-in to a local all-talk station.

I assume everyone in my neighborhood was awakened. Car alarms went off, and if the shaking didn't f do it (kind of inconceivable to me), the noise would have.

Electricity service in downtown Oakland was apparently shut off, as the BART commuter rail system's operations center lost power, and went to back-up, and so did television station KTVU, the Fox affiliate, whose impressive broadcast facilities (the best among the local stations) are located in Jack London Square on the edge of downtown.