I just automatically thought that earthquakes didn't happen on the east coast. I know we have a hell of a lot of tornado's, after effects of hurricanes, and floods but never have I experienced a earthquake. So as I was sitting at my desk joking with my coworkers our chairs started to vibrate and we joked like who the heck is running down the hall shaking our chairs. About 3 seconds later the shakes became more violent. I mean we were really moving and things were falling. My co-workers in our large break room said that the tables were sliding. As I stated earlier I had never experienced an earthquake, until then. Lets just say I too started shaking profusely. One of my co-workers that has experienced an earthquake got her purse and and headed out followed by another. As I turn and looked, everyone was shouting its an earthquake and the only ones left on my team was my manager and I. We were both standing there like what do we do and then she says lets get out of here so I grab my purse and realize that I brought my journal (ya know, to let work, work for me) so you know I had to grab that!!! By this time we meet up with our safety leader for fire evacuations and she says that we shouldn't leave. After about 2 minutes our VP comes by and says to get out. As we are outside everyone is trying to text and call their family members/loved ones. Lets just say nothing worked. Now mind you this earthquake was nothing in comparison to the earthquake in Japan. However, at that moment I knew what it felt like to not be able to get in contact with anyone to let people know that you were alright and make sure that they are alright. However, Twitter was that ram in the bush for a lot of people (including ya girl, follow me @akakristin). For a while I was able to receive incoming but couldn't make any outgoing. Luckily my phone was working when my part time job called to inform me that my boss had decided to close up shop for the rest of the day!!! In a perfect world, work would have been dismissed early at my full-time job too, however that didn't happen.
After actually finding out that it was indeed an earthquake (as if). I went into geek mode and also learned that it measured a 5.8 on the rictor scale, with the epicenter in Mineral, Va. From researching further, I learned that anything over a 4.0 earthquake can be felt. I mean in comparison to the earthquake in Japan this was about half the size of that (somewhat, of course we know that was on another level). There were reports that there has been 3 aftershocks since the initial earthquake. The last aftershock, a little after 8 measured a little over a 4.0. After watching the news tonight this earthquake was felt in several parts of the east coast. I heard that NY, MD, NC, GA, MA, and even Canada felt the ground shake. There was structural damage in parts of Alexandria, with 3 smashed cars from the bricks falling. There are also people in parts of Md. that are homeless tonight due to structural damage/shifting not allowing them in their own homes. Even the Washington monument sustained cracks. So far I haven't heard of any casualties (thank God). What I learned from today's earthquake is that God is still in control. He is able to do things that we deem impossible. And today he showed us by shaking things up a bit, literally.
Well another item to scratch off on the list of things-I've-never-done... survive an earthquake. Did any of you have any earthquake experiences?
