Earthquake

So, as I'm sure you've heard by now, the East Coast had a 5.8 earthquake yesterday. We were lucky (if you want to call it that) enough to have felt it- Mr M while he was at work, LMS and I while we were grocery shopping. Mr M works on the second floor of a four story building and they thought at first that maybe a truck had hit the building. LMS and I were in the checkout line at the grocery store and at first I thought there had been an explosion somewhere. But the shaking kept going and going and we all realized it was a real, live earthquake.

During dinner we felt an aftershock (4.2), but it wasn't nearly as long as the original earthquake. After we went to bed Mr M felt another aftershock (3.4), but I didn't feel it, so I'm guessing it was pretty short. There were also a couple smaller aftershocks during the afternoon, but we didn't feel those either.

We haven't found any damage and we weren't hurt, which we're very thankful for.

I've lived in California for about ten years of my life and I don't ever remember an earthquake that strong or that long. I certainly wasn't expecting an earthquake out here. If anything, I'd expect a tornado (though apparently we don't get many of those, either). Quite the surreal experience.

As we were driving home, LMS and I were talking about what to do in the event of a natural disaster: in a tornado, find a strong room with no windows (the basement bathroom in our house). In an earthquake, get outside to an open field as soon as possible (the neighbors down the street have an open field we could go to) or under a strong table or desk if inside (I remember that much from the earthquake drills in elementary school). I then realized that we really shouldn't have just stood there in the grocery store, waiting for the shaking to stop. Luckily there wasn't much damage in the store- just some random packages of food falling off the shelves.

Last night Mr M and I discussed what to do in case of a natural disaster, and realized we also need to make a plan for a fire evacuation. Since the bedrooms are on the second floor we need to get one (or more?) of those ladders that you hang out a window to get out of a burning house. And then we need to do some practice drills for each of the above scenarios so we all know what to do.

Do you know what you'd do if there was a natural disaster in your area?