Take Five: Earthquake, What Earthquake?

by Mary McHugh

 
Have you ever been in an earthquake?  I guess you Californians know all about them and just stand calmly in a doorway until the shaking stops, but in New Jersey there has never been an earthquake and I never expected to experience one. Well, if you live long enough, I guess you go through everything.

Recently I flew to Seattle to stay with my grandsons while my daughter and her husband went skiing in Utah. I couldn’t wait to hug those little boys again. They moved out there last summer after living near me for fourteen years where I had instant access to my grandchildren. I brought along an umbrella because everyone said it rained in Seattle all the time.

It didn’t rain once, but it did earthquake, which isn’t really the same event. I wish I could tell you that I was in a building that swayed from side to side, that the mirrors and pictures fell off the walls, and I was scared to death. Actually, I was in a Land Cruiser taking the dog to the kennel and didn’t feel the slightest vibration, tremor or shake in that tank of a car. The dog didn’t even wake up and howl or bark. Where was his famous animal’s intuition that warns him in an emergency?  Tucker is a golden retriever and the calmest creature on earth so he didn’t notice a thing. When we got to the kennel, there was chaos. Things all over the floor, dogs barking, people shaking, birds squawking.  “What happened?” we said when we walked in. “There was an earthquake!” they said.“Didn’t you notice?” My daughter and I looked at each other. “We didn’t feel a thing,” we said.

This is pathetic, I thought. A 6.8 earthquake and I have not one exciting story to bring back to the east coast.  My middle grandson, Ian, is 12, and he was in his science class when the quake struck.  The teacher told the children to dive under their desks, which I’m sorry to tell you they have practiced many times in case someone with a gun comes into the classroom, and so they responded immediately and automatically. Ian says the floor and the ground outside undulated with the quake and the water splashed out of the fish tanks spilling the fish onto the floor, but “Fido survived,” he said.  Fido is a fish who eats dog food.  My littlest grandchild, Michael, was singing “It’s a grand old flag,” in music class at the time, and one child changed the lyrics to “It’s a grand old earthquake.” They are eight years old and I think that’s pretty creative and brave. A neighbor whose husband works on the 67th floor of a building in Seattle, said the building swayed back and forth so violently he felt seasick when it stopped. One woman who was quoted in the Seattle paper said she was on a boat and felt like she was being sucked down into the icy sea.

When Karen and I got back home, we looked for signs of damage in her glass and wood house that looks out over Lake Washington and the Cascades.  The only thing we could find that proved that there had indeed been an earthquake was four wine glasses that had fallen over but didn’t even break. The flight to Utah was canceled because the Seattle airport control tower was damaged, but Karen and Doug just drove to Portland the next morning and arrived safely that afternoon.

I enjoyed every minute with those children and listened to earthquake stories from the mothers and fathers at the school bus stop in the morning. I had nothing to contribute. We really were very lucky because there was extensive damage in Olympia and Tacoma and some damage in Seattle. They explained to me that because the earthquake took place 30 miles underground, the damage was much less than it might have been.

Some psychic predicted another quake during the days following the Olympia quake (a 9.0 this time) but by then I was slogging through the snowstorm in New Jersey. Anybody seen Spring? Surely you have better earthquake stories than this. Please write and tell me about them.

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