A little after 2:00 this afternoon, I was prepping for my case tomorrow when the building started to shake slightly. There was a slight pause, then it shook a little harder. When it didn't stop for about 10 seconds and the leaves on my plant were trembling, I decided that it was not just me and headed out into the hallway to see if anyone else had felt it. They had, and our office manager Jeremy shooed us out of the building lickety-split. Of course, we are on the 12th floor, so the evacuation took a pretty long time.
To our surprise, there weren't that many people out on the streets by the time we finally got out of the stairwell. Someone passed around the message that a friend in DC had just called someone else, and he said they'd had a big one there. No one's phones were working, and we just sort of stood around waiting for someone to make a decision. My coworkers were all more freaked out than I was - I think it was the first earthquake any of them had ever felt. I pointed out that they don't tend to last all that long, and so by the time we'd gotten out of the building it would already have been over. No one else had heard that you're supposed to get under a table or desk; I guess I just took it for granted that you learn that in California.
Jeremy told us that we didn't have to stay if we didn't want to, and many of us, myself included, decided to take him up on it. I was fairly certain that nothing else was going to happen, and that if the epicenter had been somewhere around Virginia, even an aftershock wouldn't do much damage in New York, but it was a beautiful day and I liked the prospect of having an afternoon off. I relaxed for a bit, then went for a run. If this is a New York earthquake, I think I could handle a few more of them.
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