Since a fairly big earthquake struck today in places where earthquakes aren’t all that common, I’m curious to know how many had it as their first.
Was it exciting for you? Scary? Surreal?
Are you feeling more like you can’t believe it actually happened or are you now hoping against hope that you never have to go through one again?
Please, only those who actually had their very first earthquake today.
First, sort of, for me… “sort of” because I didn’t notice it (was driving).
I did once experience an explosion from a fuel storage facility a couple of miles from home, when I was 14 or so. The sound you hear if someone stomps their foot and some things nearby rattle? It was like that, only more loud (though low in pitch), and practically everything in the house rattled.
We left the house shortly after that and could see the heavy black smoke plumes in the distance.
I would guess that is something like an earthquake, possibly not as sudden and substantial, with a longer period of shaking.
This was the first one I noticed, so yeah, I’ll call it my first quake. I’m an East Coast lifer. I slept through the one last year. This one freaked me out. The building was shaking, the floor was shifting, and there was this loud rumbling sound. And it just went on and on.
I don’t think we handled it all that well, probably due to lack of experience. Everyone basically sprinted for the doors as fast as they could. After it was over, I was thinking, “Probably should have just got under the desk or something.” Oh well, next time. If there is a next time.
I live in NC and never experienced an earthquake before. I didn’t know what was going on at all
I’ve lived on the east coast my entire life, and I’ve never experienced an earthquake. I honestly had no idea what was happening. Various thoughts that ran through my head in the space of what must have been seconds were wind, a truck going by the house or some weird (and catastrophic) structural thing going on with the house. I was genuinely frightened for a moment or two that the house was falling down.
That it could have been an earthquake didn’t even cross my mind till it was over. I know they can happen here, but it certainly wasn’t my first thought, especially not with how hard everything was shaking. I assumed any quakes we had would be pretty minor, so as to not be felt at all.
I was just grabbing my phone to call my SO when he called me and asked if I’d felt the earthquake. I turned on the TV and it was all over the news.
Me.
I’m somewhat annoyed: I didn’t notice my first earthquake. However, everyone else in the office did feel the movement. This is in Toronto.
I’m pretty sure it was my first earthquake, yes. Certainly the first I noticed and thought to myself, “was that an earthquake?”
I was in bed when it happened. I wasn’t sure if it was an earthquake; given that I live so close to Camp Lejeune, it crossed my mind that maybe some crazy-big warplane could be flying overhead. It wasn’t until I was out to eat when I saw a report on TV that I realized it was a quake. I’ve felt just one other quake in my life. It was back when I worked in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was quite a bit weaker, but also much closer, so the two experiences were fairly similar.
I really thought it was a bomb at one point because one of the office staff started screaming, “EVERYBODY OUTSIDE NOW! RUN!” Before that I was pretty sure it was an earthquake, but that made me start wondering if they knew something I didn’t and the building was coming down. Fortunately there weren’t too many people in the building because after that it was a full-on panicked sprint to the exits. For a couple of seconds, which are now a blur in my memory, I felt like I was really running for my life. Once we got outside and the shaking stopped, the whole thing seemed a little silly, but it wasn’t much fun.
Aren’t they just fun?
It was my first. Thought I was having vertigo. I was on the 12th floor, and it felt like it was swaying, but without the creaking we get during wind gusts. I felt dizzy and jumpy in the pit of my stomach. Wrote it off since nobody else seemed to notice, then started seeing all the people posting about earthquakes and got a text from my husband, who also felt it.
It was my first earthquake and I honestly thought that a truck had hit the building I work in. I grabbed my phone and keys and went outside to see the damage. I was surprised to hear that it was an earthquake. I went back to my office after 15 minutes to get back to work and call my wife and my son’s daycare.
First for me. I thought someone was trying to break into the apartment, then realized the whole place was shaking. So then I thought maybe those wacky Marines down the street were doing Something Mysterious. 
At that point I went for an inner doorway and hung on. It really seemed to last forever. Afterwards I went outside, where a lot of neighbors were congregating. No one knew what had happened, though one lady suspected it had been a quake. News reports started coming in after a while, though we didn’t have phones for a good bit of the afternoon.
I felt shaky and kind of woozy for a while afterward, almost like a post-migraine “hangover,” that I figured was my brain trying to reintegrate the sensory vs visual data. I was a little scared while it was going on- I think my location and just not knowing what the cause was has more to do with that than lack of earthquake experience. Now I’m just sort of ‘meh.’ I could go without being through another one, but I’m not hyperventilating over it.
Not me. I went to college in California and experienced two earthquakes during that time. The shaking during this one was much stronger than in my first two, however. I live about thirty miles from the epicenter.
Apparently I’m in a area where there were effects, but I didn’t notice anything.
But even if I had it wouldn’t have been my first earthquake. I had an earthquake wake me up once back in the eighties.
There was a very mild one last year that I sort of noticed (sounded like a dump truck going by), but yesterday was the first real one for me.
It’s the first one I’ve been fully awake through. When we had that minor rumble here a year or so ago around 5 am, it woke me up and then I went back to sleep. About 20 years ago in Colorado, same thing. This was the first time I felt the tremors coming on, then the whole building shaking, the “What the hell was that?” moment and all the excitement afterwards.
Last year the condo upstairs was thoroughly remodeled, and at one point they were running some machine on the floor that shook the building. That time I got concerned it was an earthquake, until it kept on steadily for half an hour at a time. Just a machine.
When the real earthquake hit, my first thought was damn, people, that machine they’re running now is way worse. I figured out it was an earthquake within a couple seconds. Whoa.
My 6-year old grandson was accused by his other grandma of jumping around upstairs. He’s the most intelligent child I’ve ever known. He said he wasn’t jumping, it was an earthquake. He knew what it was right away even though it was the first time in his life.
This was my second, living mostly in Maryland. We had one some months earlier in the year (or late last), if I recall.
This time I was in an elevator on the 4th floor of my building. The elevator is built with consideration for swaying, but my immediate thought was that it was slightly malfunctioning, before I was informed that I just rode out an earthquake.
I’m not really the type to panic, though, so I made my way to the stairs and walked to the 1st floor where we had to respond to the situation.