Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Earthquake in Arlington?!

I'm sitting here hacking away when all of a sudden the house starts to shake a bit, like maybe a large truck is rumbling by the highway. And then it starts to rumble even more, and shake even more. Went on for what felt like 15 seconds?

I stepped onto the street, and met half a dozen other neighbors poking out their door. We all looked at each other with same confused looks. Earthquake? That seems to be the general agreement.

There was no damage to be seen.

Man, that was surreal.

So far, the only news of this appears on twitter.

Looks like this did happen.

And me, I've totally forgotten what the safest part of the house is in an earthquake. Time to go do a little research.

Update: Confirmed - we definitely had an earthquake. It was 5.8 - not too shabby. here's the map.

Update: And now it's 5.9. Oh, and the safest place indoors is right where you are:

Stay inside until the shaking stops and it is safe to go outside. Research has shown that most injuries occur when people inside buildings attempt to move to a different location inside the building or try to leave.
The trick of finding a doorway is OK to follow, provided the doorway is load bearing and close by. The advice given suggests you want to protect yourself from glass and falling debris (like, say, the TV behind me). Apparently, there's not much you can do if your structure actually decides to collapse.

No comments:

Post a Comment