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On Saturday night there was a 6.5 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Northern California. Today at 1:53 p.m. PST there was a 7.0 magnitude quake in Haiti.
To compare, the '94 Northridge Earthquake was a 6.7 and the '89 Loma Prieta Earthquake in the San Francisco area was a 7.1. They left about 57 and 63 people dead, respectively. And if you remember the earthquake here in the summer of 2008, that was nothing--a mere 5.4 magnitude shaker that still scared the shit out many people.
Here at LAist, we hope emergency preparedness is something that you don't ignore (if you do ignore it, have you seen this video yet?). At the very least, we hope you have water stored (switched out every six months and not placed directly on concrete). There are many websites to help you get prepared (here's the LAFD .pdf handbook) and being trained in the free Citizen Emergency Response Team (CERT) program is extremely helpful (plus you get a sexy green helmet at graduation!). It's totally dorky to say, but being prepared should be an "L.A. thing to do."
