The Earthquake of 2/28/01
Feb. 28th, 2001 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperWe had an earthquake today, just before 11am our time. I was at work at the time, and I'm not sure what alarmed me more — the pretty significant rattling of the building and of all the disassembled pieces of cubicles awaiting moving over to our company's main building, or the general uneasy, queasy feeling of the building after everything stopped.
This was the scariest thing I can remember experiencing in a long time. I belatedly remembered about throwing myself under my desk and made it to the floor more or less when the jolt started to subside. Then they asked us over our intercom system to exit the building — presumably so they could inspect it. We wound up outside for maybe 10-15 minutes, and I yakked nervously with several of my coworkers while others headed straight to their cars and started going home.
While I was outside, people with their cell phones started getting initial reports of the magnitude being about 6.2.
I got back inside to find a whole slew of posts already on Dar's exrvl-l mailing list as people started yakking nervously there to check in and compare notes. Discovered as well that posts had commenced on the Yahoo! board for 30 Odd Foot of Grunts as well as on the chat board at greatbigsea.com, from folks who had heard about the earthquake and were concerned about us. My 76-year-old grandmother was first of my family to email me and check that I was okay — so since the local phone lines were all pretty tied up I emailed her back promptly as well as the rest of my relatives on the Net to let them know I was alright and asked them to call one another and spread the news since they could contact each other more quickly than I could.
Friends started logging onto my MUSH, too, to check in and make sure we were all right. Our house Internet site didn't even blink. And my partner and my housemate Mimi started reporting in from the Murkworks about what they'd experienced. Unsurprisingly the house cats — or at least two of them, our Polly and Mimi's Jiji — were seriously freaked out. Email started going around between the household at large as well.
For a little while at least I sat at my cube feeling very strange. I'd never had such an adrenalin rush before and it seemed to take forever to wear off, even though a cup of hot chamomile tea with a lot of sugar in it helped. Coworkers were leaving right and left and a few that remained weren't really getting any work done. One of them reported to me that they'd bumped up the magnitude of the quake to a 7.0, at about the same time that that same report came in over exrvl-l.
I finally saw the mail from our lead in which he wisely decided that none of us were going to get any work done today and took him up on his offer for us to take the rest of the day off and go home and check on family and loved ones and the status of houses and the like. Traffic was more or less clear on I-90, though I-5 was pretty heavily crowded through downtown Seattle. I saw a sign while changing freeways that said that the 4th Street S exit off I-90 had been shut down.
On the news, the talk show host Dorie Monson was taking calls from people and getting reports about various levels of damage all over the area. One of the state senators in Olympia called in to report how 24 of the 25 senators in the capitol building had dived under a big table and had been praying that the dome overhead wasn't going to come down, because the table would not have stopped it from squashing them. She was also very ashamed that none of them had thought to do anything to assist the 25th senator who is paralyzed from the waist down.
Got home, took off my jacket and hat and vest and snugged my mate immediately.
She had found no problems with our foundation or gas, but had forgotten to check upstairs for anything that had fallen over. Found that the license plate that had been hanging over Paul's bedroom door had fallen down, and several of my books had fallen off one of my shelves. One of them had had a corner of its back cover bent. Other small random items had fallen as well: Dar's wall hanging with the picture of Princess Mononoke and several packages of pictures we hadn't done anything else with yet. There were a couple of CDs on the floor of the studio and random papers that had fallen around in there.
To my relief, my little brother quickly answered the email I sent out — so I was able to find out quickly that my relatives in Kentucky would get the word fast that we were all right.
Watched the news for a little while and then listened to more radio reports. Exchanged email with my friend Kathryn who was extremely nervous still, as this had been her first quake and she was still rather shaken. Considered trying to resume my Nethack game that I'd had in progress, but by now I'd gotten comfy on the couch and the adrenalin was finally wearing off, so I opted to take a nap instead.
This writing is as of waking up. My friends online are still checking in. I got email from my pen pal in Norway and am updating my friends on AetherMUSH as well. There's a whole slew of posts on the greatbigsea.com chat board from folks all over the continent relieved to hear that those of us in Seattle are okay, which is very touching. Current reports place the (probable) final estimate of the quake magnitude at 6.8.
Most Amusing Thing Heard on Dorie Monson: A proposed theory that Mayor Schell (a.k.a., according to Dar, 'Mayor Fuckwit the First') had actually staged this quake by detonating an explosive device 30 miles underground to rattle the city and distract us all from the news about the Mardi Gras riots.
Second Most Amusing Thing Heard on Dorie Monson: A caller proposing that this quake be called 'Ash Wednesday Earthquake: Mardi Gras Retribution'.
Wacky reports are coming in from the east coast — Mimi says that her mother had seen an ABC report that gave us 200,000 people without power, no trains, no planes coming in, and a large number of people seriously injured. Whereas local reports are only reporting 25 injuries at Harborview Medical Center.
And in general proof that not even a major quake in Seattle can stand in the way of the King County Judicial System, I have been summoned to jury duty.
This was the scariest thing I can remember experiencing in a long time. I belatedly remembered about throwing myself under my desk and made it to the floor more or less when the jolt started to subside. Then they asked us over our intercom system to exit the building — presumably so they could inspect it. We wound up outside for maybe 10-15 minutes, and I yakked nervously with several of my coworkers while others headed straight to their cars and started going home.
While I was outside, people with their cell phones started getting initial reports of the magnitude being about 6.2.
I got back inside to find a whole slew of posts already on Dar's exrvl-l mailing list as people started yakking nervously there to check in and compare notes. Discovered as well that posts had commenced on the Yahoo! board for 30 Odd Foot of Grunts as well as on the chat board at greatbigsea.com, from folks who had heard about the earthquake and were concerned about us. My 76-year-old grandmother was first of my family to email me and check that I was okay — so since the local phone lines were all pretty tied up I emailed her back promptly as well as the rest of my relatives on the Net to let them know I was alright and asked them to call one another and spread the news since they could contact each other more quickly than I could.
Friends started logging onto my MUSH, too, to check in and make sure we were all right. Our house Internet site didn't even blink. And my partner and my housemate Mimi started reporting in from the Murkworks about what they'd experienced. Unsurprisingly the house cats — or at least two of them, our Polly and Mimi's Jiji — were seriously freaked out. Email started going around between the household at large as well.
For a little while at least I sat at my cube feeling very strange. I'd never had such an adrenalin rush before and it seemed to take forever to wear off, even though a cup of hot chamomile tea with a lot of sugar in it helped. Coworkers were leaving right and left and a few that remained weren't really getting any work done. One of them reported to me that they'd bumped up the magnitude of the quake to a 7.0, at about the same time that that same report came in over exrvl-l.
I finally saw the mail from our lead in which he wisely decided that none of us were going to get any work done today and took him up on his offer for us to take the rest of the day off and go home and check on family and loved ones and the status of houses and the like. Traffic was more or less clear on I-90, though I-5 was pretty heavily crowded through downtown Seattle. I saw a sign while changing freeways that said that the 4th Street S exit off I-90 had been shut down.
On the news, the talk show host Dorie Monson was taking calls from people and getting reports about various levels of damage all over the area. One of the state senators in Olympia called in to report how 24 of the 25 senators in the capitol building had dived under a big table and had been praying that the dome overhead wasn't going to come down, because the table would not have stopped it from squashing them. She was also very ashamed that none of them had thought to do anything to assist the 25th senator who is paralyzed from the waist down.
Got home, took off my jacket and hat and vest and snugged my mate immediately.
She had found no problems with our foundation or gas, but had forgotten to check upstairs for anything that had fallen over. Found that the license plate that had been hanging over Paul's bedroom door had fallen down, and several of my books had fallen off one of my shelves. One of them had had a corner of its back cover bent. Other small random items had fallen as well: Dar's wall hanging with the picture of Princess Mononoke and several packages of pictures we hadn't done anything else with yet. There were a couple of CDs on the floor of the studio and random papers that had fallen around in there.
To my relief, my little brother quickly answered the email I sent out — so I was able to find out quickly that my relatives in Kentucky would get the word fast that we were all right.
Watched the news for a little while and then listened to more radio reports. Exchanged email with my friend Kathryn who was extremely nervous still, as this had been her first quake and she was still rather shaken. Considered trying to resume my Nethack game that I'd had in progress, but by now I'd gotten comfy on the couch and the adrenalin was finally wearing off, so I opted to take a nap instead.
This writing is as of waking up. My friends online are still checking in. I got email from my pen pal in Norway and am updating my friends on AetherMUSH as well. There's a whole slew of posts on the greatbigsea.com chat board from folks all over the continent relieved to hear that those of us in Seattle are okay, which is very touching. Current reports place the (probable) final estimate of the quake magnitude at 6.8.
Most Amusing Thing Heard on Dorie Monson: A proposed theory that Mayor Schell (a.k.a., according to Dar, 'Mayor Fuckwit the First') had actually staged this quake by detonating an explosive device 30 miles underground to rattle the city and distract us all from the news about the Mardi Gras riots.
Second Most Amusing Thing Heard on Dorie Monson: A caller proposing that this quake be called 'Ash Wednesday Earthquake: Mardi Gras Retribution'.
Wacky reports are coming in from the east coast — Mimi says that her mother had seen an ABC report that gave us 200,000 people without power, no trains, no planes coming in, and a large number of people seriously injured. Whereas local reports are only reporting 25 injuries at Harborview Medical Center.
And in general proof that not even a major quake in Seattle can stand in the way of the King County Judicial System, I have been summoned to jury duty.