Earthquake?

[Apoc]

I felt aftershocks in bed, but it was more like 5:45 last night.

[Jake]

Public schools in DC are closed today, I guess so they can all be inspected for structural damage.

The Metro was running all afternoon and night at 15 mph to allow workers to inspect the tracks for cracking or things. They picked it up to 30 mph around 10 PM and this morning resumed regular speeds.

I noticed a few things moved at our apartment. My mom said some things shifted on the walls at home and a few little trinkets fell off of shelves. Fortunately, nothing broke.

[WRXtranceformed]

[D_Eclipse9916]

I liked the 20 minute recess we got to sit outside in front of the building and shoot the shit with some of my co-workers.

In Sterling it was like being on a hammock someone was pushing up and down on, didn't rattle anything too bad up here.

Our boss sent us home. I was only on the 7th floor, most of us thought it was some fat peerson running down the hallway at first :lol: My office isnt very PC.

[V1GiLaNtE]

^ Saw one just like that except it said "REMEMBER THOSE WHO LIVED"

lolz

[WRXtranceformed]

Cool imaging from the USGS that shows where people felt the quake. Click on the "Zoom Out" version:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/se/082311a/us/index.html">http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/events/se/082311a/us/index.html</a><!-- m -->

[Jake]

most of us thought it was some fat peerson running down the hallway at first :lol: My office isnt very PC.

That was my first thought too :thumbup: Then I realized it would take someone awfully heavy to make the floor actually shake and the lights/HVAC start swaying.

[DavidL]

LOL spent a couple years in California growing up and was like "Hmm an earthquake? Weird..."

[Steve85]

Was in the car when it happened so didn't feel a thing.

When I came into the office today (off yesterday) I found that it must have been divine intervention. I may not have made it out alive if I were at my desk:

CARNAGE!!


Experienced a couple similar sized quakes in CA, both were enough to wake me up. I moved my bed from under the window after the first. Definitely a weird feeling for us "east coasters".

[V1GiLaNtE]

most of us thought it was some fat peerson running down the hallway at first :lol: My office isnt very PC.

That was my first thought too :thumbup: Then I realized it would take someone awfully heavy to make the floor actually shake and the lights/HVAC start swaying.

I thought somebody in the warehouse drove our fork lift into the wall and shit was coming down..... hock:

[Mike]

i thought the crazy old dude who lives below me had driven his truck into the building.

[Apoc]

[Sully]

I was transporting Budget Rental Trucks on I-95 and did not feel a damn thing, but after viewing facebook and seeing that the "apocolypse" was in fact here according to everyone, I figured I was in the perfect vehicle for looting. I figured I'd start with some flat screens because although the end of infrastructure would mean no power or cable, what fun would it be to live in a post-apocolyptic world without some ballin flat screens.

[Steve85]

[exaggeration]shit. just. got. real.[/exaggeration]

after divinely escaping death at the office from a falling trinket, our well has been shaken and stirred and water is turbid - according to dictionary.com this means it's dirty. dictionary - because someone decided that for every english word, there should be 37 other words that mean the same thing.

tonight will be spent running water directly from the well to the hose outside for a little while, letting the well "rest" and repeat until clean...or empty. then, if not empty, rinse all the pipes, water heater and water conditioners.

[Apoc]

our well has been shaken and stirred and water is turbid - according to dictionary.com this means it's dirty. dictionary - because someone decided that for every english word, there should be 37 other words that mean the same thing

I lol'd.

[Jeff]

I didn't even notice the thing. I looked around after someone was like OMFG EARTHQUAKE and I noticed the weights in the grandfather clock were moving around. That was pretty much it. However, my wife called me and was like "I thought the house was falling down." My grandmother (according to my mom) really though "they were invading." When I asked who "they" were there was no answer available. I can only assume she thought it was the Soviets.

[Jake]

I can only assume she thought it was the Soviets.

I love old people.

[JustinG]

.... I can only assume she thought it was the Soviets.

[CaptainHenreh]

[Dave]

A lot of people have played the quake off as a slight rumble or nothing, so I feel like I need to share my experiences over the past week.
I was working in Charlottesville, about 30 miles away. Our building shook, but by no means was it terrifying. More freaky than anything, and alarming that it was actually happening. No damage anywhere, and nothing fell off walls, so like many of you I assumed it was nothing special. What most of us don't realize is how quickly the energy in the quake dissipates as it travels away from the epicenter, hiding how powerful it really is.

After finding out it was a 5.8 and not being able to reach my wife for an hour, who is a schoolteacher in Louisa, I went home (approximately 5 miles from the epicenter). I was not prepared for walking through the doorway. My dog was safe, but hysterical and clearly terrified so I let him outside while I surveyed the house. If you go through my house normally, you'd find that on average there is probably 4 picture frames hanging in every room; post-quake we were averaging only one still hanging. Doors had swung open/closed and closet contents were strewn about. Everything that was on our mantle had fallen off, except for the sand ceremony bottle from our wedding. Our clothes closet literally was covered in clothes and baskets such that you couldn't even see the floor. Heavy furniture had moved several inches from its original place and one of our toilets was cracked (luckily not leaking). The worst was the kitchen; the doors to the microwave and dishwasher were actually opened, and several cabinets had swung open and glass/ceramic was shattered everywhere on the counter and floor.
We've been cleaning for days, which has only uncovered more damage. There are cracks along multiple interior walls, most alarmingly along the header beams on the first floor. Drywall screws have popped out and baseboards in several rooms have seperated from the walls. The foundation has a number of cracks in it along the backside of the house, and the concrete front porch has also developed a large crack seperating it from the house.

And that was just the first day. Since then, we've had 17 aftershocks of 2.0 magnitude or higher, and countless smaller ones that the USGS isn't reporting (from what I can tell). You can generally hear it like thunder in the ground just before you feel it sweep across the house. It always seems to travel East to West, and the further away you are, the less you feel. It truly is a scary sensation to be sound asleep in the middle of the night and be woken to your house shaking violently, and then having smaller jiggles while you wait for your heart to stop racing. Now that the house survived this weekend's hurricane, I'll be having an engineer come out and check out the house to find how severe the damage really is.
Insurance does not cover any damage unless you have a seperate earthquake policy; I don't think there is a lot of those policies in VA... The people in this area are not wealthy like in the metropolitan areas most of you are from, with the median household income falling around $40k here; for the most part, they can't afford the repairs needed or to replace what was broken (from what I saw driving around, my damage is less than many others and I don't even know how I'll afford the repairs I know I need).

My goal here is to ask that you think twice the next time you dismiss this earthquake as "nothing"; if you're a hundred miles away and you felt it, that is a big damn tremor. Thankfully, there were no deaths from this and the damage estimates are relatively small because the population density of this county is very low. If I get the opportunity, I'll try to post some pictures here as well.