Earthquake Twitter

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t feel a thing.  I was sitting in my office working on the computer and two of our phone volunteers were working away making calls.  All of a sudden, I heard a squeaking noise that seemed to be coming from the roof.  I think it could have been the air conditioner unit rocking back and forth.  My office mate felt it, and the volunteers felt it, but I didn’t.  Anyway, the both got up from their areas and walked out the door talking about an earthquake.  I was astonished!  My office mate and I went outside with our volunteers and overheard a woman sitting at a table at the café next door talking quite excitedly on her phone about whether the person on the other end of the phone felt it too. 

When we can back inside, I immediately went to Twitter and started reading all the tweets about the quake.  I was amazed reading this stuff and seeing that the epicenter was in Virginia and we were feeling it all the way up here.  As the day went on countless posts, tweets, and pictures were available from all over the East coast.  There were some items that were somewhat funny such as pictures of fallen lawn furniture, and some that were semi-serious of cracks in windows in downtown Philadelphia and New York City.  If it weren’t for the Internet and the social media sites, I certainly don’t think the news would have traveled so fast.

Later that day I heard a geologist speaking about why we felt it up here and the potential for aftershocks.  He said that the vibration carried through the Appalachian Mountain range and that aftershocks could come up to a year later.  That last statement somewhat surprised me because if there is such a time gap between the quake and the aftershock wouldn’t it just be another event?  Well I guess it is a different type of quake.   I then heard on the news later that evening that the last quake of this magnitude we had was 100 years ago.  I had no idea that we could have earthquakes in this area, but I guess anything is possible.

I am sure that everyone will have a story of their own as to where they were and what they were doing when the quake of 2011 hit. What’s yours?