Thursday, July 1, 2010

The Earthquake of 2010

t was on a sunny and warm Wednesday afternoon that I sat down to finish writing a briefing on my balcony. I had been driven to the balcony as they had been running the monthly fire alarm tests in the building. I decided to escape to the balcony as a way of getting away from the alarm. Around 2 pm my laptop started to shift on my lap. At the same time, my chair started to shift back and forth. The alarm in the nearby car dealership started to wail. It took me a moment to realize that I was sitting through my first earthquake. There was a brief pause followed by three or four minor aftershocks. I did a quick search of twitter and there was nothing. It was a bit freaky. Later in the afternoon, I headed over to the US Geological survey web site to find that we had received a 5.5 on the Richter scale earthquake having an epicentre 50 mile north of Ottawa. I chided myself a bit when it was all over as I had picked the wrong day to work from home as my office colleagues had been sent home for safety reason. But did I really want to have to take fourteen flights of stairs down the fire escape with a bunch of panicking office workers. I think the balcony was probably the best place to spend an earthquake.