After shock, then what?

Usually when we on the east coast think about earthquakes, we think of the stereotypical.  California.  San Francisco.  San Andreas fault.  A "Desperate Housewives" ratings grab during sweeps. 

We think this because for many of us who grew up on the east coast, we have not experienced an earthquake before. 

Today was the first time in my life that I have experienced an earthquake. Whenever I would hear about a very minor one on the news and what time it occurred in the Delaware valley, I would justify to myself that I might have felt it, even though I really didn't.

But today, while visiting my grandmother at Rockland Place, it happened. I was with my grandmother outside her room on one of the common area computers. She was sitting by the window and I was looking up something online.

As I was typing I felt a rumble underneath my feet, like one of the maintenance crew in her building were moving a large piece of machinery such as a dishwasher, across the floor and out the door.

I turned to her as she was sitting by the window and quizzically asked, "Do you feel that?"  At first I ignored it.  Perhaps there was a large plane overhead, or a train was going by loudly outside (even though there are no train tracks near where she lives). 

But the shaking continued.  The keyboard began to slide, then two of the flat-screen monitors started to slide across the circular table.  They eventually tipped over.  The heavy printer on the counter opposite the desk started to move as if possessed like Ellen Burstyn's refrigerator in Requiem for a Dream.  Well, maybe not as much.  But that's what it felt like.  

She got up from her chair and walked over to where I was.  "What do you think that is?," I asked her.  She looked at me blankly.  The shaking continued.  And got more intense.  I gave her a sort of hug I guess and pulled her next to me. 

I'm not trying to over-dramatize the situation.  I knew that we would be ok.  But I quickly realized that "This is what an earthquake must feel like.  I bet this is an earthquake."  For a few seconds while I was hugging her I was worried because the floorboards beneath the carpet began to shake up and down and perhaps side to side.  The floor felt weak beneath us. 

The ceiling above was shaking.  Other residents were running (as far as older people go, I guess, or wheeling themselves) out of their room.  The resident meanie, who lives across the hall from my grandmother, came out of her room with her cane.  "Bah, oy gevault! Vat are you people doing out here?" We just looked at her.

And all of a sudden everything stopped and went back to normal.  It was eerie the way the whole phenomenon had come and gone so quickly.  Although while it was happening it felt like two minutes even though it was probably 30 seconds at the most from start to denouement. 

We quickly went downstairs and someone said one of their friends tweeted about an earthquake.  We didn't realize until I made it home that it was a 5.9 (or 5.8?)  quake on the Richter Scale and was felt from Georgia to Maine and as far west as Ohio and Michigan.  Pretty creepy.

It was definitely a unique experience but one which I will not soon forget.  And before you Left Coasters start mocking us East Coasters for being scared and wusses, just remember how you all reacted to your Carmageddon kerfuffle with your freeway a few weeks ago.