Feel Last Week's Quake? Tell the USGS About It!

Remember that earthquake we had last week? You know, the 5.4 magnitude that struck just before lunchtime and had tall office buildings swaying on their rollers, grocery stores seeing items topple from shelves to the floor, and the media scrapping all other programming for non-stop post-quake coverage. Yeah, that one. Well, if you felt it, the US Geological Survey wants to know about it.

So far, according to the OC Register's Sciencedude, "more than 40,000 people went online" following the shaker to log in their experiences, however "researchers want more." The information gathered helps scientist analyze a seismic event and allows them to further their understanding of earthquakes. It's easy to head to the USGS site and enter your information about the quake; in fact, if you experienced other major SoCal quakes, like Northridge in 1994, you can still enter your information into their database.

Here's what we know so far about last week's 5.4: "Caltech has determined that the quake occurred on the Yorba Linda trend fault, a little known 20 mile system between the Whittier and Chino Hills. (Story). Researchers are still debating whether the event was a strike-slip or blind thrust event."

AP Photo/Ted S. Warren