Remember That Huge Earthquake?

What a stable, non-disastrous weekend it's been for us thus far! We're making curried chicken salad, eying the unopened bag of Cheddar Sour Cream Ruffles, and catching up on a week's worth of unwatched YouTube videos. It turns out that when you search for "Seattle" on YouTube, this very helpful National Geographic video about the Nisqually earthquake in '01 (and the fault that runs under downtown Seattle) is the second result. Were you living in Seattle during 2001? Got any stories? Grab some Ruffles and check this out:

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By Katelyn in Miscellaneous on June 21, 2008 4:30 PM

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ncderw

All of this happened when I was in my 8th grade in science classroom. As the class was going to start but the quake stopped us from go forth with class (thanks a lot to that quake because we don't have to do the test on that day! Anyway with all of sudden I felt like if someone done some jackhammer within very next classroom from us, i got really puzzled at first but subconciouslly told me it was an earthquake. (Because all of us, Washingtonians, were trained for potential earthquakes) I suddenly shouted, "earthquake!" and every students and teacher, include me dived under the desk with any questions. After we all dived under the desk, we could feel a strong rumble, it if the jackhammer is coming in our classroom cuz it would getting louder and the ground started to shaking. i could see the tv up corner of the classroom swayed, followed with rolling, we all was like what a ride because the rolling would stay for like 30 seconds or so and rolling felt like if you standing on float deck under the storm. Once the quake subsided, well about to and the fire alarm went off my teacher told us to stay under the desk til the quake actually subsided. But the teacher told us to go ahead and get out of the building so we did, i could feel the ground being flexing and slowly getting back to the right place. It was an interesting experience.

Later that day when i got back home my bookshelves toppled over on my bed.

Katelyn

"BRB, earthquake" is hilarious!! And BBSs and CRT monitors are blasts from the past... Good story, thanks!

aithne

I was working in a building just north of the Market that day. I happened to be on a text BBS, and managed to post "BRB, earthquake" before diving under my desk, and sticking one hand up to steady my extremely heavy CRT monitor. I grew up in northern California (was out of power for a week after the Loma Prieta quake), so it really wasn't a huge deal for me. It was also mostly rolling waves instead of the sharp side-to-side jerks, which was reassuring.

The weirdest part was feeling the building I was in flexing for a few seconds after the earthquake died away. I'd never been through one in a multiple-story building, and feeling the building keep going after the earth settled down was very odd.