I was in one near Los Angeles in Orange Country one year. 6.3 in the richter scale, 33 seconds. That was one of the longest 33 seconds of my life. I could hear the building shaking all the way down on the first floor, and I was on the 3rd floor.
The scariest part was that my contact lense were in a case on the night stand, and I was standing in the door way. I refused to go get them. I figured the room was going to shear off and so I chose walking in a land of debris half blind was better then winding up buried in rubble with my contact lense.
Whats wierd was after the quake, all the sounds of the people in the building at 4:30 AM in the morning. The car alarms, children crying, people yelling.
The next day, driving around, I found buildings that had cracked. One small motel, very old, very nice, had caved in half way, its top story half crushed the lower story. Not much else that you could noticeably see.
Bill