THE Earthquake that Shook Washington DC…

I thought I would write a quick post about the recent earthquake here in Washington, DC as this was definitely a first for me and well it happened in DC so it works with the whole theme here. This obviously is not going to be a recommendation of a place to go or thing to see but some have asked about my experience so I thought I would just write it down here. Now, I know some of you think that the city overreacted to the experience. But, you have to understand that DC is one of the if not the most targeted place for a terrorist attack and also earthquakes are quite rare. Supposedly people who were being evacuated from the Pentagon claimed that it felt exactly like 9/11 and the fear of a potential bomb explosion was also debated as the cause for the trembling by others. To me, it was simply something that I had never experienced so I didn’t know what it was except scary.

I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden it felt like a very overweight person was running down the hall. That doesn’t sound PC but it is the truth. Then it started shaking more violently and so I ran to the nearest doorframe and held on until the movement stopped. To me it truly felt like the building was going to collapse. After it was done, my knees gave out and I had a lovely mini panic attack. I’ll admit that I don’t do well with natural disasters. You can’t run from them, you can’t fight back…what will be, will be. But I tend to do better than a good portion of the DC community in dealing with the lesser ones (see: snowstorms). A co-worker got me laughing and off the floor by handing me the diarrhea medicine bag (long story there…someone left behind some things from a past assignment and we joke about its contents). From there we had no direction. No one told us whether we were to stay put or evacuate—tsk tsk building management team tsk. Our boss then made an executive decision to gather us all and leave the building. It was very calm.  No one was running down the stairs, no screaming, no pushing, nothing that would be defined as overreacting. We walked downstairs and out to Farragut Square where many others had gathered. Here we were all searching on our smart phones to see what actually had happened. My awesome Verizon phone was one of the only ones that worked in our group. Lame as it is, my hands were still shaking as I searched and found out that it was a 5.9 mag, 3.7 mile deep earthquake less than 100 miles outside of Washington, DC. Supposedly it was the most powerful one to hit the East Coast in over 67 years and over 114 years for Virginia. Our discussions then centered around where would you have not wanted to be during the earthquake, on the street, in a car, on the top of a double decker bus…for me it probably would have been riding the Metro between Rosslyn and Foggy Bottom where you are literally in a tunnel below the Potomac River. No thank you.

a much needed cocktail

There wasn’t any real fear in Farragut Square or panic. People were just standing around talking and no one was sure of the next step. I, as were a couple others, was still a little shaken but doing ok. We did end up going back into the building but we were dismissed from work very soon after that. So, three of us, Sarah, Rachel and I, went to have an adult beverage outside. It honestly was the oddest thing. It came. It was scary. I was definitely shaken both mentally and literally :-) And then it was like nothing ever happened. We all went on our way. Even just standing outside in the sun right after the quake was odd. It was a gorgeous day, no looming clouds or anything to imply that a natural disaster had even happened. I am use to storms, winds, dark clouds, rain, funnel clouds, something almost sinister. This was just a freak accident breaking up a perfectly lovely weather-wise day—bizarre.

Some structures were unfortunately affected. Businesses and schools were closed the following day to make sure that the buildings were secure. The Washington National Cathedral was damaged and currently the Washington Monument is closed due to cracks at the top caused by the earthquake. So obviously there is evidence that it did happen but even today it feels like it was weeks ago and somewhat unreal. Therefore DC, it is on to the next natural disaster at least according to the news media…we’ll see if the hurricane hits this weekend. I am glad to say that I survived THE earthquake that shook Washington DC…

And thank you, Mark for dedicating your fantasy football season to me and the other survivors.