The first I knew about this great earthquake was when Dale called a little after 2 p.m., from the house where she is house-sitting, in Slanesville. “Mom, have you heard anything about an earthquake?” She said there had been a rumble and the house started shaking, and the chandelier was swaying. She had thought at first it might be a passing truck, but from where she was she shouldn’t have been affected by a truck passing on the county road.
I then checked google news, and tv news, and heard the account of the 5.8 category earthquake, centered in Louisa County VA, and felt in about 22 states from Georgia to Ohio, and affecting a third of the population of the United States . People evacuating buildings everywhere, In DC and New York and elsewhere, though since then I have heard that during an earthquake you should stay inside. But what do we Easterners know?
I had felt nothing, and in response to email and phone queries, I could find no one else on Rannells Road who had felt anything, but heard from persons in Capon Bridge, including Harry, who was sitting in his car at Capon Bridge Market and thought there was something the matter with the car when it started shaking, and Elaine, who said: the house shuddered -- I thought maybe it was an explosion somewhere at first -- it lasted here about 40 seconds -- then, I remembered that I had felt the same thing when we lived in Vancouver, B.C. and realized it was an earthquake. Augusta, including Mike, who has a crack in a second story ceiling where tape pulled apart, Slanesville, Kirby, Burlington, Levels, Paw Paw, Stoney Mountain, and Romney--at the Courthouse, Sheriff’s Department, and Committee on Aging. Jersey Mountain Road. At Mountain Top and at the Regional Jail. From people who had been in Cumberland or Short Gap at the time. Rick, up Grassy Lick Road, did not feel anything, but Bill, across the road on Nathaniel Mountain, was sitting out in his tepee and thought a bear had gotten in under the floor. Scary! One of our Hampshire young people who is now living in Morgantown felt it there, some people had things fall, tall buildings especially felt the sway, and buildings at WVU were evacuated. She commended the local emergency system and radio station, who were on the ball notifying people and checking up on experiences. Someone suggested that the closer you were to a river or water source, the stronger the tremors were, can anyone else bear that out?
Elsewhere, my son-in-law, Lloyd, at Goddard was working in the basement of the building at the time, and experienced the surreal sensation of rolling waves below him and at the same time awareness of the huge building above him. Son Bruce and his family were in his office in a 15-story building in New York, and felt the building sway. That passed and they went on with their work, but the Courthouse next door, and other buildings around them were evacuated. Halle writes, from Annapolis: I was very scared. I was talking to someone at the front desk and I thought someone was moving stuff upstairs and then I saw the glass doors shaking and the whole building. We went to an inner office without windows and got under a table and we could feel the floor shaking. Then someone pulled the fire alarm so we went down the stairs (we are on the 2nd floor) and headed outside. By then it had ended. Halle was especially worried about her boys at home; they told her afterwards that the little dogs freaked out. And Amy, on the bay: My office of 25 people had just stepped onto a sailboat for a 3 hr. bay adventure (reward for working hard) when it happened and then immediately everyone got flooded with texts about it, though we felt nothing ourselves. And yes, of course we continued our adventure.
My brother, Jack, in Lebanon, Penn thought his wife had overloaded the washer, but when he checked, it was empty. His wife, who was in the yard, felt nothing. My niece, Donna, who lives about 19 miles from the epicenter of the quake, had some pictures fall off the wall and some glass breakage, but others in the area fared worse. (See in Part 2). Niece Tami, in Martinsburg, on the top floor of a three-story building, felt the tremor before the rumble, and a co-worker who was in the restroom at the time said all the automatic toilets flushed. Great-nephew, Cody, attending college in North Carolina about 350 miles from the epicenter was on the 4th floor of the Bio bldg and says the whole thing swayed for several seconds. Elaine’s son in Richmond, who is a psychiatric social worker, was sitting with a client in his office, when things fell off the shelf, etc. He said he didn't have time to react, because he had to comfort his client who was quite shaken in more ways than one. Her daughter in Columbia, MD, felt it at work, but others in the area did not. My sister, Lois, in Hagerstown could see the loveseat, on which she was sitting, moving back and forth from the wall, but her son elsewhere in the same city felt nothing. Brian, in Augusta, who had lived through earthquakes in California, ran outside and could see his house swaying. His wife Val, working at FEMA in Winchester, says their building shook BIG TIME, they evacuated for about an hour, then returned to work. They had to!! They're FEMA, after all.
It is amazing to think of how such events, lasting only seconds, impinge themselves on our memories, while our minds try out and discard several theories as to what is going on, before we settle on the right one, or perhaps, only find out later. And though we come through unscathed, those few seconds make us feel an affinity with others, even those who may suffer far more than we do.
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