DC and Virginia's Excellent Adventure

I'd be willing to guess that on Tuesday morning, probably 90% of the people in the local area had never experienced an earthquake. I could be wrong if there were more tourists than I thought there were.

But no one who was here Tuesday afternoon can say that now!

As anyone who has seen the news in the last two days can tell you, most of the East Coast had an earthquake on Tuesday afternoon.

For the maximum excitement of the people involved without causing serious damage, this one couldn't be beat! I haven't heard any reports of anyone being killed or even seriously injured. Which was shear, dumb luck!

You can help researchers learn more about this event by entering your experiences here.

In Maryland, one wall of a masonry building collapsed, sending rubble down on three doomed cars. If people had been where the cars were, they (presumably) would have had the sense to get out of the way when the ground started shaking. The cars, however, being parked, were stuck with supporting a pile of cinder blocks and becoming statistics.

I saw photos of another building in Maryland that had the top of it moved about an inch to the side, right along the line of a course of bricks part way up.

There were some local area schools that noticed some damage to their buildings, and local kids got a day off while the building inspectors came to see if they were still safe.

The National Cathedral and the Washington Monument both sustained damage, which makes me very sad. They are among my favorite buildings in DC. The photos above and below are of the cathedral.

But for someone who had never been in an earthquake before (while awake), it was about as exciting as such a non-destructive earthquake could get. I found I could start a conversation with anyone by just asking about their experience.

In further news that's sort of connected to this, there are areas of Maryland that are under a tornado warning tonight, and the whole area is expecting Hurricane Irene on or about Sunday.

Robin asked on Facebook if we were going to get volcanic eruptions next week.

This is the first time I've ever had a blog post that included the tags: earthquake, tornado, hurricane. All in one post, mind you!

I hope you're having a better week than this area is!


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