I said to my mother-in-law on the phone “Around here, this is new. We don’t get these. Folks in California shrug and say ‘must be Wednesday’” :).
Of course, we do get blizzards and hurricanes, both of which are rare in your area… and we have an awful lot of politicians nearby too (though those are more of a manmade disaster!).
Even in the Bay Area, earthquakes that damage buildings aren’t that common.
I started this thread curious to know how many (before this earthquake) had never ever been in an earthquake before today.
I live in Arizona, so obviously nothing was felt here.
My first earthquake, so a big deal for me. I was sitting quietly at work (4th floor cubicle, fairly new building), reading something on my computer. Once I realized the shaking and heaving was the entire building moving, not me having a weird vertigo attack, I was baffled by the quiet–everything I could think of that would shake the building (gas explosion? Truck hitting the wall? Extreme renovations on one of the other floors?) would make some noise, but this made hardly any sound at all.
Once it was over, consternation began all over the floor. “That was weird,” said my supervisor in the next cube. Two cubes over, a colleague: “Did everything move just now, or was it just me?” Some huddling and hubbub, but no exodus. I looked out the window and everything looked serene (it took some minutes for the sidewalks to fill with people). I sat back down and started Googling for news, and was almost relieved to find it was an earthquake–now it made sense.
Walking home as usual, I noticed thicker traffic and more crowding at the bars (outside seats especially) than is usual for a Tuesday afternoon. An unusual number of businesses had unusual numbers of employees “taking a break” on the sidewalk. Other than that, nothing.
My inner cynic, which is never quiet for long, suspects there would have been a lot less evacuating if the weather had been less lovely today–any of the recent days when we were having violent thunderstorms or wilting heat, it would have been harder to say “You know, until we’re REALLY sure it’s safe, we should stay outside…”
And I’m sure the Californians are laughing at us. Why shouldn’t they? Here in Philadelphia we laugh when Atlanta shuts down for an inch of snow, and upstate New Yorkers laugh at us when we shut down over 6 inches of snow.
Did anybody else remember an Onion headline from a couple of months ago? “Planet Earth Doesn’t Know How to Make it Any Clearer It Wants Everyone To Leave”?
That was my first earthquake! We have a seismic shake table at work, and sometimes it moves so violently that the offices shake…I thought that was the issue at first. Everyone left their offices and sort of milled around in the common area; there was no evacuation. Only two guys who were in my department at the time claim they did not feel it.
On another note, a cousin in Virginia was quick to go on Facebook and blame the earthquake on lack of prayer.
Considering that it happened in Eric Cantor’s district, I can think of a few other things, if she’s looking for reasons for God to be angry…
Not a safe place to be during an earthquake by the way; you want to be away from the sides of buildings in case something falls off.
The east coast is essentially has large chunks of granite pressed together with all sorts of faults running through the area. Most are inactive since the area is considered passive with respect to tectonic activity.
Still, the rifting of the Atlantic, along with the rifting occurring along the Rio Grand, and the Basin and Range (Utah/Nevada/California) do allow for some compressive stresses to build up over time and result in an seismic event, such as today.
You should appreciate that your basement rock is granite and thus the earthquake waves pass on through. This is not the case in certain areas of California. For those living in the basin areas of Los Angeles, Ventura, and Ojai, they have the benefit of living on top of giant Jello bowls. If e. g. the San Andreas descides to rip from Palm Springs up to the Carrizo Plains, those who are sitting on solid rock (or where the alluvial thickness is relatively small will find the earth rocking and rolling for about a minute. For the basin folk, with miles and miles of fill, OTOH, their the shaking will last for up to four minutes.
If you really want to make it a horror show, let the quake happen during a severe Santa Ana condition with winds blowing at 25 to 40 mph and a few fires erupting in residential areas.
So yeah, Californians are laughing because they know they’re dooooomed!
After waiting around outside of my office building for a while, I dashed in to get my stuff. I was slightly nervous taking the elevator up (we can’t get into the building via stairs - only out. It’s security :rolleyes: ) Even walking down the stairs to exit I saw no damage. Traffic was no worse than a normal rush hour.
However - I was walking in front of a glass-enclosed skyscraper when the quake hit. I could see and hear the windows shaking. I did not really have time to react before the shaking stopped. If the quake had been worse, 15 story’s worth of shattered glass would have turned me into Typo slaw. I was and am pretty calm about the quake - really this was no big deal. But please understand why people might get the slightest bit hinky when starting death right in the empty eye sockets.
The real dangers were waiting around outside with all those damn smokers. Yuk! The real annoyance was that my 2:00 PM meetign was re-scheduled for the fourth time. God does NOT want us to have this meeting.
That story one always hears about animals predicting earthquakes seems to be a myth. My parrot was useless. I was staring right at the little bustard when the shaking started, and he was oblivious.
She also has broken bric-a-brac and a foofaraw over her gewgaws.
I work on the 8th floor of a building in Arlington VA, and we were sent home early. I experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 and this one today was a lot more violent. I was surprised that there wasn’t any physical damage that I could see, but maybe a lot was hidden.
You and those posting like you are being fools.
An earthquake on the east coast is a big deal. For the same reason that an earthquake on the moon would be a big deal. It’s rare, and unprepared for. You west coasters deal with them all the time and you expect them. It’s part of your life because it is as much a part of the land you live on as amber waves of grain and corn rows are in the midwest.
Do you realize what it means to have an earthquake where one does not generally belong? It means scientists get all happy, because there’s something legitimately interesting to investigate. It may mean that things are changing in the earth, or maybe it just means there are fault lines that are more active than previously recognized.
When a tornado lands in NYC, even a small one, it’s a BIG DEAL. The tornadoes in tornado alley in the south are much more prevalent, and regular, and less of an “event”, because that’s where they belong. This is why our little quake mattered. Even though the little sissies ranted and raved about it, despite the lack of injury and relative lack of damage.
Get it? 
God, I’m sick of the news coverage already. The way the press is covering DC (only), you’d think it was nuked instead of the ground rumbling a bit. I have not a clue of damage in Richmond or Charlottesville either, which are a lot closer to the epicenter than DC is.
Around the NE USA, this is all just good chatter. I’m sure it’d be the same – right – if Southern Cal had a sudden freeze and 4-6" of snow.
Hm, roomie and I were sitting on the porch watching the chickens and didn’t feel a think in eastern CT.
Now I am feeling cheated =(
I think it’s really cool that I felt it all the way up on the Ottawa River. As it was happening my office chair started oscillating slightly in the 1 to 2 Hertz range. I said to my office-mate “I think we’re having an earthquake.” Thankfully he said, “Oh I felt that too” or else I’d be questioning my health, or sanity.
Columbus, OH, here. I work on the 20th floor and was surprised to find that my office chair had suddenly developed massage capabilities. It vibrated briefly once, then once again, for maybe 15 seconds total.
After ruling out the likelihood that someone on a different floor had moved something large, I asked my colleagues if they’d felt the shaking and one of them replied that the DJ on the radio had mentioned it.
People who felt it were more bemused than anything. I’ve experienced mild earthquakes before, but not in Columbus. It’s odd to go through the exercise of ruling out possible causes and then having the earthquake lightbulb go on.
I suppose when California falls into the ocean, we should all come in and start a thread on “Well, they knew it was going to happen, so what?”
Live in the DC suburbs, in a patio appartment. Had audible rumbles, a brief pause, and then harder rumbles that I could feel. Fifteen or twenty seconds all together. Nothing broke. No cracks in the building. (sixties brick building very long all one piece. almost designed to show earthquake damage.) Mostly no one home in the building.
I had a strong emotional response, probably because earthquakes in Japan when I was a toddler scared me a whole lot. I don’t specificly remember the Japan experience, but I knew immediatly what it was, and had an adrenal response to it.
The underlying strata on the east coast have multiple layers of rock, some of which are older than the last Supercontinent, and are cooler, and more rigid than is common anywhere else in the world. The geologically long period without major techtonic movement also causes the whole region to be able to transmit seismic energy very long distances.
Haven’t felt any aftershocks, and I suspect that same inelasticity makes them somewhat less likely. I could be wrong.
Tris
It’s not fair to belittle people for being shocked and upset when something new happens to them. Coming from England, which generally stays put, I was (and still am, truth be told) very frightened of earthquakes, even though they are a fact of life here.
My husband will just roll over in bed and start snoring again while I’m hovering in the doorway, heart beating, legs like jelly, wondering whether I should wake the kids or not.
The fact is that any natural phenomenon is really frightening because we humans can not control when or where or how they come. Look at the big quake and tsunami here six months ago… Yes, this time, it was a small tremor but it’s a sign of how powerful nature is and a hint that all is not as safe as we like to think it is.
it cracked the Washington Monument.