EARTHQUAKE!!!!

Friday night we had a 4.5 earthquake here in Ottawa. The epicenter was over in Quebec, but that is only about 20 km from us. We were just sitting there, watching a movie, when all of a sudden we heard this rumbling noise and the house was shaking a little. I said, “Holy Crap! What the hell is that?” and Jack said, “shhhhhh –shhhh!!” I thought it felt like an earthquake, but I didn’t know there were earthquakes here – and Jack had never been in one big enough to actually hear the rumbling before so we discounted that theory in about 1 second. We ran to the window and drew up the shades to see if the neighbor’s house had collapsed, because that is kind of what it sounded like. But no, everything was normal. So we ran outside to see if we could see anything – still nothing. (and no one else out looking, either, which was weird to me.) About an hour later the news finally had an update and told us it was a 4.5 earthquake! It was the strongest one to hit the area in 15 years, which probably explains why I didn’t know we even had quakes here. I’m not a big fan of earthquakes.

My first earthquake was the 94 Northridge earthquake. Remember that one? January 94, Los Angeles, 6.7! A 6.7 trumps a 4.5 by A LOT. It happened at 0430 in the morning and I was in a rare deep sleep in my bed in Pasadena. I probably would have slept through it, but my boyfriend at the time was on his knees shaking me yelling, “wake up, wake up, wake up!!” Remember I was coming out of a sleep so my first thought was, “OMG! He’s having a flash-back to ‘Nam.” (He was 20 years older – so this was possible.) But then I woke up a little more and could hear and feel the rumbling. I remember seeing the doorframe to the bedroom moving. So, of course, my next thought was, “OMG! INVADERS!!” (It was either aliens or the Russians.) I dived off the side of my bed to grab my 9mm – but I had just moved it to a “safe” place the day before because I was babysitting a little kid. So I came up from the floor with my HANDS pointing like they were a pistol. That would have been very effective against any invaders. Finally, I woke all the way up and realized it was “just an earthquake.” (An earthquake seemed much better than either of my first 2 thoughts.) My boyfriend was still sitting on the bed looking at me and kind of laughing at my reaction. The worst part of a big earthquake like that is the after-shocks. For the next week or so afterwards the ground would just start to rumble and shake at random times – and it was always creepy because you didn’t know if it was just an after-shock or “the big one.” I like tornadoes way better.