We Had An Earthquake Here!

Yesterday was an exciting day. Around 6:30 last night I was in the living room folding laundry and talking to Shawn. Shawn was holding David. All of a sudden we heard a loud sonic boom. I said, "What was that?" Immediately the house started to shake. I started screaming at the children to "Come here!" (They were playing in Sam's bedroom.) Shawn started yelling, "This is it! This is it!" (He thought the New Madrid fault was finally going.)

Then it was over. It really only lasted a matter of seconds, but that was plenty for me. Sarah's little heart was racing when we all congregated in the kitchen.

Shawn immediately called my parents (who live closer to the New Madrid fault) to see if they were all right. They said they hadn't felt anything. Then I called a girlfriend to see if she had felt it. She hadn't felt anything either. Then we started second-guessing ourselves..Could something have crashed out in the pasture? Why didn't anyone else seem to feel this thing that was so very, very noticeable to us?!?

We finally discovered that we did, in fact, have a 3.6 magnitude earthquake. The epicenter was only about 8 miles away from us.

When Shawn went outside last night to put up the animals he noticed a few things that were out of place in the barn. The previous homeowner had used the barn's rafters as a place to store old plastic pipe and boards. Shawn noticed that some plastic pipe had been shaken out of the rafters. He also noticed that some firewood and a stack of plastic buckets had been knocked over. The only evidence that we found inside the house was that one picture frame had fallen over in our bedroom.

Exciting, scary times. One good thing though...it does force Shawn and I to revisit our earthquake preparedness. What do we need to improve upon? Are we adequately prepared if this quake had been larger and more damaging? Are you adequately prepared if your area starts shaking?