The Big One

Yesterday was an interesting day for me. As I sat in my cubicle around 11:45, thinking about lunch while exchanging phone calls with our escrow officer as we desperately tried to close on our house, I got a little dizzy and started swaying.

Or so I thought.

After a few seconds, I realized that I wasn’t the only thing swaying. So was my computer, and the walls of my cube, and the plants all around the office. I heard a co-worker exclaim as though she were on a roller coaster; someone else yelled out “Earthquake!” Then, the swaying stopped and the shaking started.

Now, I’m a die-hard east coaster. Give me a nor’easter or a blizzard or a tornado or a hurricane any day of the week. I’ve lived through those, and I know what to do when they occur. And although the first time wasn’t necessarily a charm, I’m now a bit more educated in the wildfire scenario as well. Earthquakes, however, a bit new and mostly an unwelcome experience for me.

When things started shaking, and the walls began moving back and forth, the voices on my floor elevated. This wasn’t a typical earthquake—something you usually classify as momentary dizziness and dismiss before looking at your neighbor, who seems to have come down with the same case of dizziness simultaneously, before you’re both like, “oh, wait, what? Was that an earthquake?”—no, this time there was no questions. I stood up (why? I don’t know. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? No? Oh well.) and looked around, watching a few of my more experienced coworkers run for doorways or hit the floor. It eventually went through my head that I probably didn’t want to be standing right then, and I kneeled under my desk for the next terrifying 15 seconds or so.

When it stopped, things were still a bit shaky. It was like I’d just been on a boat for hours and stepped onto land—that woozy, discombobulating feeling. While my coworkers shared their various clichés, (“That was a doozy!” “ Holy cow!” and the like) I jumped onto my computer and Googled “recent earthquakes.” Within seconds, I was able to inform them that it was a 5.8 (which would later be downgraded to a 5.4) magnitude quake that hit Chino Hills. (Which sparked another debate as to the location of Chino – wasn’t that in NorCal? You know, up by Stockton? No, that’s Chico—Chino is outside of L.A.)

Thankfully, as The Governator later reminded us, L.A. came out rather lucky. CNN also reports that “The Big One” is still to come – that within the next 30 years, there’s a 99% chance that California will experience an earthquake of 6.7 magnitude or greater. (Good thing we just signed a 30-year loan! Hello, irony.) Hopefully by then, I’ll be shoveling my way out of my driveway in New England.