That at one moment, when the thing was amping up … I now recall thinking — and it flashed through my mind — “what will it feel like if this building collapses and I ride it down to the ground?”

I mean, no building is immune to earthquake … if the quake is big enough.

And when the “event” is still building, you don’t actually know where it’s going to end up.

And now we all sit around and debate “where would be the best place to be, when the next quake strikes?” I suppose “in an open field” … if you can arrange it, but not many of us live in open fields anymore.

Is “on the street” better than “inside a building”? How about a one-story building vs. a multi-story one?

Anyway, the biggest panic I’ve ever heard about, pertaining to a quake?

That would be the Loma Prieta Quake of 1989. Also sometimes known as the World Series Quake because it hapened just a few minutes before Game 3 of the Athletics-Giants World Series.

Anyway, a couple of co-workers, Gregg Patton and Steve Dilbeck, were in Candlestick Park (not the Oakland Coliseum, as I originally wrote) when the 6.9-magnitude quake, which is a serious event) struck. As I recall, they were in the basement of the stadium, perhaps having something to eat?

What they described next seems consistent with what I have seen from quakes:

Native Californians tend to just stop … and wait. If it’s a big enough quake, it’s going to collapse a building, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Californians know this. I wouldn’t call it fatalism, per se, but there is a sense of “this is bigger than we are.”

Those who never have felt a serious quake — just about anyone from the eastern half of the U.S., that is — tend to react more, uh, vigorously.

Patton and Dilbeck described East Coast journalists running about, some diving under tables, just this side of panicked … while they stood and waited. For the building to crush them like bugs .. or for the event to end.

If it’s big enough, and you’re in a big, heavy building, it’s going to come down, and your standing in a doorway or under some thing table isn’t going to make much of a difference.