EARTHQUAKE!!!!!

So...an earthquake hit Virginia today. Weird.

I didn't really know earthquakes happened in Virginia. Apparently they do sometimes. And apparently this earthquake, while a modest 5.8 magnitude, was felt all the way between Toronto to North Carolina, according to reports.

I can't really speak for those more outstretched areas, but I can tell you it was felt in Washington, DC. Maybe my disinterest in the sciences really shows here, but I don't remember learning anything about fault lines or anything on the East Coast, so I wasn't quite prepared to recognize the sudden trembling and shaking as an earthquake. Particularly because I didn't want to sound stupid, if it happened that earthquakes were impossible out here.

It would seem they're not impossible out here, though.

It didn't last too long, but long enough to throw everyone in a bit of a tizzy. When I first noticed the shaking, my initial thought was, "honestly, what are they rolling down the hallway upstairs to make our office shake like this?" It was a valid question because sometimes you feel the impact of things happening in the hallways, and the shaking was just slight. About 30 seconds later, I thought I felt it calming down, so I started to turn my attention back to my work.

But then my monitor started to shake harder, and my chair shook harder, and then the picture frames on the wall started shaking, and the doors trembled, and I pushed myself out from my desk and looked around the office anxiously. When the shaking stopped, I popped up out of my chair, swapping nervous and confused looks with new staff assistant Rebecca (today was her second day on the job). The other 3 people in the office came out from the back, we decided it was an earthquake that had caused the trembling, and we wondered what to do with ourselves. It was over, but should we still stand under a doorway, so we could say we did? Do we get out of the building? Do we just go back to work?

I have to admit, the scariest part of it all was hearing people running through the hallways to get out of the building. Apparently some people thought our building - which is the oldest office building on the Hill - was ready to tumble right then and there, and they weren't sticking around to find out differently. But hearing them running out made me suddenly worry that it wasn't an earthquake, but maybe a bomb that had gone off somewhere, or we were being invaded or something. Because let's be honest, the Capitol probably has more evacuation procedures set in place for outside threats than from natural disasters. So for whatever reason, my mind flitted to the idea of noxious gases spreading through the hallways. I only thought it for a second, but still,  it was thought. I must've hit the hysterical phase.

New staff assistant Rebecca seemed like she wanted to do something that seemed like an evacuation procedure, and I wanted to talk to some people who had left - we talked to some people in the hallway who had come down from the 5th floor, which had really felt the impact - so we decided to go outside. No evacuation alarms or warnings had come on, so I didn't think anything about a real evacuation happening.

It happens that I'm the office emergency coordinator. Probably not the best job for me. I try to avoid the idea of emergencies whenever possible, so that they just don't happen. Plus, the only time I've had to act my part was for a practice evacuation, and it was when I was about 2 weeks on the job. Yikes. Turns out, I'm not that good at this. I didn't clear out my office, I didn't grab our emergency 'go bag,' I didn't even grab my own purse or phone or blackberry to check with co-workers who were out of the office. I just walked out, hoping to hear from other people what their earthquake experiences were. And then I found out we were officially evacuated. Luckily, another guy grabbed the bag (the waters in it were lifesavers about an hour into the evacuation), and we found some shade to hang out in when we were told to clear the area that was originally our official evacuation spot.

And government offices seem to be particularly attentive and thorough in their checks for structural soundness in the buildings, because while other offices nearby had allowed their employees to go in and grab their belongings before going home (everyone everywhere closed their offices early), the Capitol Police refused to let anyone even near the buildings. And there was no way anyone in the building was going to go get my purse for me (which I hadn't actually believed would happen - but I had to ask, all the same). Finally, our Chief decided that we could all go home, when he found out it would be at least "a couple hours" before they opened the buildings again.

So co-worker Matt lent me some money for the Metro, and we shoved our way onto the train to get home. Literally, we shoved people so we could get on. It was necessary. What was not necessary was Matt's comments about how it didn't seem too smart to be stuck underground in tight tunnels with no good way out after an earthquake had happened - while we were stuck on a train underground in a tight tunnel. The train had stopped because another one was in front of it at the metro stop, and when it started again, it made a few weird noises that just didn't sound right. Matt then learned one of my top 2 fears is being buried alive or stuck underground, and he quickly shut up.

But I made it home. Purseless and phoneless, but home. And early. And safe. So I think in general, the afternoon was more interesting than bothersome. But I don't think I've every wanted to be able to go back to work the next day as much as I want to tomorrow. I really feel lost without my belongings...

And now I can say I've been in an earthquake. I can't say I've experienced a whole lot of dangerous natural phenomena, and I can't say I want to experience many other types, so I'll take this one and call it good.