Well, it’s been almost a year since my last blog. I guess I’m just not really into blogging these days…
Most of you have probably already heard about what happened today from the news. This is my point of view:
I went to work like I do every day. Went to the gym at lunch so I could run 3 miles since I was a lazy bum this morning and couldn’t get up to run before work. Went back to work and was there for about 45 minutes. Then it happened. I felt the floor shaking under me. My office is on the 28th floor. I got that butterfly feeling in my stomach. My initial thought was plane in the building. The people around me were looking around and we started to ask if anyone else felt that. One person said something about it being similar to when the building shakes in the wind. Usually it creeks and sways, this felt different. Then I saw one group running for the elevator. Literally bolting for the elevator. They were saying that they didn’t know what it was but they were getting out of the building as fast as they could. My group got up to evacuate as well. We were taking the stairs though because we didn’t want to get trapped in the elevator. As we were going down the stairs (all 28 floors worth) other offices were evacuating as well. We heard announcements on some floors about the safety wardens investigating why the building was shaking. We kept going. Once we were finally outside we noticed A LOT of people waiting outside the building. Still not knowing what was going on, we went to our safe zone to meet the rest of our crew. On our way there we noticed a lot of other buildings in the area had people standing outside. I thought “ok, so it must not be a plane flying into our building, maybe it was a subway bomb.” Depending on the strength of the bomb maybe it could shake blocks all around midtown. Then we heard it was an earthquake in VA. Phew! It was just an earthquake. Next was waiting in the safe zone until we knew it was okay and safe to go back to the office. My boss decided that if we didnt’ feel safe going back to the office that we could work from home for the rest of the day. Most of my team went back to the office. I didn’t. I’ve been through my fair share of earthquakes when I lived in CA, but this one was different. I wasn’t outside jump roping with my girl scout troop, or at home and able to run into a doorway or sleeping though it at a hotel in San Diego. I was at work on the 28th floor. I wasn’t about to go back to work to feel an aftershock and have to go down 28 flights of stairs again. I went home. And I didn’t take the train. I walked. I didn’t want to get trapped underground in a subway car if there was an aftershock. So, I made it home safely, not a picture on my wall looks like it moved a centimeter, and worked from home the rest of the day. I hope everyone in VA is ok and they don’t have too much damage!
