"Now you can do a US Earthquake on your BLOG!"

The title of tonight's blog comes straight from the subject line of an e-mail I received from my dad tonight. There was no actual body text in the e-mail, just a subject line. So, I guess I should write about the day.

At 1:51 PM the Washington, DC area experienced a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. I was at work, on the 7th floor of my office building in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. It was a slow, rolling quake that slowly gained strength. I've experienced my fair share of earthquakes (some I've even written about here) while living in El Salvador and the Dominican Republic, and I was more than a bit surprised that there would be an earthquake in DC. At first, I thought maybe a car or truck had hit our building. I was about to go back to my normal work, but my boss said we had to leave the building, and everyone else was doing the same. When I was in El Salvador, we never did anything after an earthquake. We just went about our lives. However, adobe homes with clay tile roofs, no water pipes or gas lines are probably not as susceptible to damage.

Anyhow. After about an hour of waiting in the parking lot, watching firetrucks whiz by, we were let back into the building to gather our belongings, and were dismissed for the day. I'm glad I hopped into my car and went home when I did, because it was widely reported that traffic/public transportation was a mess (Read the Washington Post article by clicking here). Cell phone service was down for about an hour after the quake because so many people were making phone calls.

There was no damage to my office building or my home, but there is this video (Video of Earthquake Damage) which was taken in Tyson's Corner, the neighborhood where I work. I'm not sure which building this is, but I'm glad that isn't my car!

Yesterday brought it's own interesting frustrations, when we got an e-mail from our building facilities manager at 3pm saying that the major intersection of two highways right by the office was closed because a construction crane had collapsed (See a video/read the article here). Of course one of those roads is my road home. Good thing the Chili's next to the office has a great happy hour!

Tonight the Weather Chanel has this picture up on it's home page:


Earthquakes and hurricanes, oh my! Now that the collapsed cranes and the earthquakes are over, it looks like we might get some heavy rains this weekend in the form of Hurricane Irene. Sounds fun, right? It's probably my fault, since I washed my car yesterday!