Yeah like the rest of you East Coasters, we just had a little wee temblor. My mind refused to believe it was happening, preferring to think that it was a big truck driving by or the Second Avenue Subway rattling by…except that doesn’t exist just yet. Having been in the Northridge quake, I knew it wasn’t serious…yet, but the idea of the piles of books in Stately Beat Manor tumbling down filled my heart with dread. But the cat didn’t even wake up.
Hope the folks closer to the epicenter are okay. Virginian Colleen Doran tweeted:
That was the biggest earthquake I have ever felt in my life. Freaked out, and so are all the animals. 6.0 right here folks. GEEZUS! @joanhilty Think we just got a direct hit. Never felt anything like that in my life. Went running out of the house, animals howling!We’re all OK. Bro tried to call from Richmond, no cell phones. That shook the house big time. Really creepy. Crooked pictures on walls, stuff fell down in barn, no damage. Deer trembling with terror outside barn, staring at us like “What the hell did you do?”
Very skeerdy of earthqauke. So I ate dessert.
Illo from DRAGONHEAD by Minetaro Mochizuki, a very, very creepy manga about a train full of high school students trapped in a tunnel by an earthquake. Recommended for when your nerves calm down!
Relieved that there was minimal damage at Casa Doran.
The earthquake was felt from New Hampshire to Florida, due to the geological structure of the Eastern seaboard.
For future reference:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/se082311a.php
I wonder if there is any video of the Citigroup Building swaying…
Ajpparently, we were just a bit too far away to feel any hint of the tremblor here in Buffalo-town.
As a fellow VA-dweller, lemme tell ya, it was intimidating. I have a lot more empathy for my CA pals when they bitch about quakes, now. Thankfully damage was minimal, few things fell over, but trying to walk straight & failing because the ground is shaking underfoot while the windows rattle..yeah, scary.
According to the USGS, there was a 5.8 quake in Virginia in 1897, and about a dozen or so in the 4.0 range spanning a couple of hundred years — a mere blink of an eye in geological time.
People tend to forget the East Coast has a number of active earthquake areas, but it does. Thankfully this quake doesn’t appear to have caused any widespread serious damage.
I was probably about 70+ miles from the epicenter and while we definitely felt it, by the time we realized what was happening, it was over. We kind of lazily evacuated out of our building because we felt like that’s what we were supposed to do.
I immediately emailed my family (even sending text messages was kind of mess until recently) and didn’t realize that it was such a big deal until my NYC friends began calling me in a panic.
It was definitely a weird day and I did feel strange later, but when it was happening, it was kind over too quickly for me to feel scared.
I have a lot more empathy for my CA pals when they bitch about quakes, now.
Nice to know that one good thing came out of that tremblor.