Tuesday, August 23, 2011

You may have already heard....

I'm still alive everyone! And I have a story to share!

I was sitting at my desk today when all of a sudden my chair starting shaking. At first, I was just kind of like "What in the hell is that?" Then I stood up and the entire ground was shaking. My (fake) plant fell over and the windows were rattling. I thought the ceiling tiles were going to fall on me because of all the noise they were making.

I walked out into the foyer and looked outside, thinking maybe, just maybe someone drove their car into our BRICK building. Then I saw another woman run out of the building in front of us. I called my supervisor and asked her what was going on and she said, "Oh goodness, I thought I was going insane. You felt that, too?" I had to laugh. I walked back inside and another woman came into the foyer and said, "What was that?"

Well they are building a new interstate beside of my office as well as putting in wind farm a few miles away. So we assumed someone was doing some blasting and it caused the ground to shake.

We had a laugh and went back inside. As soon as I sat down, I got a text from my BFF asking if I felt the earthquake. Earthquake? On the East Coast? No way. As I'm texting her telling her that it was blasting, I realized that she works far away from me. Far enough away to not feel the blasting. Then my supervisor called and screamed, "IT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE!"

Then I went into the lounge, flipped on CNN and saw that it was indeed an earthquake. And...they were evacuating most of D.C. Then my mom, who works at the college, said that they were being evacuated. Then the hospitals. Then pretty much everyone else.

Seriously.

It was an earthquake that hit in Virginia that most of the East Coast felt, BUT it wasn't that bad. Especially where I live. Now D.C. may have been worse, but where my mom works? No.  I don't even think there was much damage and I haven't heard of a single injury. THANK GOD. But really? I bet you the people on the West Coast are laughing their asses off at us over here. I don't mean to sound cavalier about an earthquake, but I think we may have panicked just a little bit. But then again, the East Coast isn't exactly accustomed to earthquakes.

Anyways...it was actually pretty neat and it was the first time I'd ever experienced one. I am truly happy that it wasn't any worse than it was.

11 comments:

SkippyMom said...

Yep. In VA an shot the dog right off the couch and things started to fall off the walls. Everyone is fine, everywhere as it was a 5.9 - but we just don't get earthquakes in VIRGINIA! Glad you are okay. So weird.

SkippyMom said...

That should say "AND it shot the dog........." hee hee

twilightgazing said...

Wow an exciting day (glad no one was hurt). I remember one when I was younger, the glass door started to rattle, which we thought was just our dog leaning against it scratching.

Teresa said...

Western Kansas felt the one that happened in Colorado today, but we didn't feel it in central Kansas.

glad eveyone is OK.

The Empress said...

Glad you are safe!

Lyndylou said...

Scary stuff, glad no one was hurt :)

Bubbles said...

We didn't get them here until about 3-4 years ago... we've only had small tremors but they are still bad enough. The worst was the first one we felt and we were asleep... my heart was just pounding...

I'm glad to hear that it wasn't much worse.

Nicki said...

I either didn't notice it or I thought it was the garbage truck. Sigh. I miss all the good natural disasters.

Danger Boy said...

I wiggled some as well. And I knew the West Coasters would laugh.

Meg O. said...

Glad you're okay! That surely scared me for y'all - how random to have one on the east coast!

steph c said...

Crazy, right?! I was working on a client at the time and seriously thought the building was going to collapse. The crazy thing is that us easterners have no idea what to do - a lot of people's reaction was to run outside and that is EXACTLY what you're not supposed to do!