Today, I experienced my first earthquake. I was sitting in my living room talking to my roommate Jonny when we felt the house shake a little. We live very close to a street where large trucks drive down from time to time, so we first thought that it was just a truck. After a few seconds, and no sound of any vehicles, we realized that it was an earthquake. I told Jonny, "We should go outside!"...not thinking that staying inside a concrete house was the best idea. As we walked outside, our friend Gepson was standing inside our gate with a crazed look on his face. I walked away from the house a few feet and leaned up against our concrete wall. I started swaying back and forth. It was the strangest feeling to be standing on "solid" ground, but yet feel as if you were floating to the right and left. It was a little nuts. This happened for several seconds. Immediately, the kids in the street started running around and laughing hysterically.
We stayed outside for a while and then I came back in to get online to check to see if the earthquake registered. I use Firefox as my internet browser and for whatever reason came across an add-on for earthquakes. I installed it for fun. It checks for recent earthquakes and when one hits, my browser shakes. So, I opened up my browser to see, but the most recent one was a 2.5 in Utah. Well, I checked back later and saw that there was a 7.0 just West of Port au Prince. I guess there was some damage including a collapsed hospital. We didn't have any damage here, but it was quite the experience. As I was checking online, I felt one of the aftershocks. I went outside again...it's more fun out there anyway! ha
About ten minutes later, Marc, another friend of ours came over. He said that when he was walking down the street that kids were laughing and saying, "Mr. Doug was swaying back and forth." I guess that I stuck out since I am so tall. Maybe I sway more. If you want to read more, you can check out the following sites:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34829978/ns/world_news-americas/?GT1=43001
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsww/Quakes/us2010rja6.php
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2 comments:
SO happy your okay. I couldn't tell from the reports here how far you were from the quake. Be safe my friend.
I told Jonny, "We should go outside!"...not thinking that staying inside a concrete house was the best idea.
Um, yeah, you definitely do not want to stay inside a building, especially in Haiti. On the news this morning they are saying there are more buildings down in PaP than left standing.
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