That was many years and many quakes ago. Because my mother was calm during the quake, I wasn't afraid. The single story wood frame house we lived in was not damaged from the shaking. Another time a quake felt like a strong jerk, as if the rug had been pulled out from under us. An earthquake is shaking of the earth caused by a sudden movement of rock beneath its surface.
Earthquakes can happen anywhere.
They happen along faults. A fault is a weak point in the Earth's crust where the rock layers have ruptured and slipped. One of the most famous quakes happened ninety years ago, the Great San Francisco Quake. Use the Internet. Earthworm is a network run by the U.S. Geological Survey and UC-Berkeley that can quickly detect and track temblors anywhere in Northern California.