Somehow, the television managed to stay on top of the metal shelving unit even as it flapped back and forth. The white container on the desk is a box of batteries, which I rooted through trying to find some for the radio next to it (the power of course had gone out).

The blue cabinet lying face-down in front of my workbench was my most significant loss in the quake. It contained thousands of small electronic parts, many of them labeled only on the drawer they were in. The prospect of sorting it all out was so daunting that I didn't get around to it for more than three years, at which time I ended up dumping many of the parts into a box and giving them away to someone who was willing to test them to determine what they all were. A few years after that, I finally got around to making a wooden backing frame to attach the parts cabinets to to prevent their falling down in another quake.