Tuesday, August 23, 2011

You never know what to expect....

We knew there is a hurricane(Irene) headed our way and that was enough to think about, especially since one of my children and her family are down at the Outer Banks, and that's a prime target. But this afternoon we were treated to a rare 5.8 earthquake on the East Coast! I felt my chair shaking and asked my husband if he was doing that. But he wasn't and soon the little wind chimes I have hanging on a cupboard in my sunroom (indoors) began to chime, and dear husband notice the wall behind him shaking, too. The noise got louder and louder like a huge convoy of construction trucks might be going by, so we knew it was an earthquake. Not unheard of in this area, but certainly not of this magnitude. It lasted a half-minute or a little less and we just didn't know what to do. What does one do in an earthquake? I know in a tornado you go to the basement,in a hurricane you evacuate(which is what I hope my daughter will do in plenty of time), in a flood you go to high ground, but what does one do in an earthquake besides just hope for the best???
Anyway we are all okay, and all the children checked in (some within the danger area in Virginia, and some near the Washington DC area that was hit fairly hard). Everyone was fine though, so I feel very fortunate. People in California are probably laughing at us for getting so excited over this, but it's just unheard of in our area so it really is a big deal for us.

2 comments:

Sharon said...

Hi Mary,
Thank you for visiting my blog! I have not been keeping up my postings and have lost a few followers!:)

Everyone is talking about the quake. I live outside of Boston in a western suburb and we didn't feel a thing while downtown Boston shook like crazy.
I guess I can't use quakes as a reason not to move to Ca anymore!

Where do you live?

MaryO said...

We're in Maryland, Sharon, near Chesapeake Bay. I used to think this was the ideal place to live with rare visits from hurricanes, and only very mild quakes every few years. But having both within a few days span was a bit much!