Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Earthquake

Today Anchorage felt a 5.0 (on the richter scale) earthquake. It was centered 36 miles west of Anchorage in Cook Inlet.

I felt it, no doubt about it. My office is on the second floor of our building. I and five others were in a meeting when we all felt the building start to shake. It was a pretty good jolt followed by several smaller ones, then seemed to stop although we could still feel the floor swaying slightly. One of our group started to duck under the table, but then someone asked a financial question and we all went back to our meeting. Just a few seconds later another hard jolt hit - the guy again started to duck for cover but by the time he got down on one knee it stopped and we never felt any more movement.

We then discussed where would be the best place to hunker down during the earthquake if it had gotten worse. It was decided we should flip our big conference table on it's side and then all sit alongside it. That creates a "triangle of safety". We had one of the municipal safety officers in our meeting and he was the one who suggested that.

I read about it later on the news. No damage and no tsunamis. Just a good shake to remind us that we all live on a fault line and someday we will probably have another big quake like the one in 1964.

7 comments:

Aunt Krissy said...

They do get the heart pumping. You always wonder if it's going ot be the big one? I would sometimes hope for it so that I would get to miss work for a few days! Good thing I moved to WI huh?

A Free Spirit Butterfly said...

I am happy to hear that all is well. Glad that you weren't alone when it happened. I have never experienced that before and can't imagine my reaction.

But then again, I'd probably take cover as I get the occassional gunshots, shootings and stabbings here in my part of town.

Life is truly short!
Love, peace and blessings
Free Spirit

crochet lady said...

Scary! That would just be so unsettling to feel the earth shaking under your feet.

Glad all is well.

Kellie said...

Nothing like a good shaker to get scare you to pieces!!
Sure don't miss that..

Lisa at Greenbow said...

5 is a big one.

tainterturtles said...

That poor guy, he must have good reflexes to earthquake tremors since he was ready to hide under the table. I'm sure that's a scary thing to experience.

I'm still trying to figure out the logic of the flipping the table on it's side!

Margaret Ann said...

GeescH!!!!!!