I have to tell you about my one earthquake experience, because I find it humorous. On February 28, 2001 the Olympia, Tacoma, and Seattle areas were hit by an earthquake. It was a pretty good one at 6.8.
It was an unseasonably nice day in the Pacific Northwest. I was eight months pregnant with Ella at the time, and my parents were visiting us. Bubblehead then worked at the SeaTac airport. He was at work that day, and my parents and I had planned to go do a little shopping. Before heading to the mall, I had a book to return to the library, so my dad pulled up to the front of the building and I jumped out to put my book into the slot. Back into the truck and we were off.
As we pulled out into traffic we were stopped at a stop light, and noticed the traffic lights bouncing up and down. Now being from Wyoming, this wasn't an unusual sight when the wind really blew. We all noticed it, and we commented how funny it was that the lights were bouncing like that - there was no wind today!
It wasn't until we got several more lights down the road that we started hearing about an earthquake on the radio. Well now the bouncing lights made sense! It sounded like some areas of town had lost power, and we considered going home, but since everything looked okay where we were, we decided to go ahead and head north to the mall. I mean, how bad could it have been - we didn't feel a thing!
There was our mistake. As we got off I-5 at our exit, all the traffic lights were out. None of the businesses had power. Cell phones weren't working, so I used a payphone to call Bubblehead. He told of actually seeing the waves ripple through the floor of his building at work. Of course he was going to be at work for a while, as the airport was affected. We decided then we had better head home. The roads were a mess with traffic - it took us two hours to get back.
There was plenty of damage done, but luckily no one was killed in this earthquake. I've never been in an earthquake before, and I'm not even sure I can count this one, because I DIDN'T FEEL A THING! I was in the middle of a 6.8 earthquake and I missed it. (Maybe that's a good thing - perhaps Ella would have been a February baby if things had been different. ;)
