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23 June 2010
Earthquake. In Toronto?→[More:]
I was sitting here at the computer, watching the piano move back and forth. So bizarre.
There's wasn't any real noise, just stuff rattling in the house. Maybe a slight rumble, like a truck's going by or something. What's funny to me is that, in what seems like a long time but is probably only a second or two, you go from "is that a truck?" to "is the dog running around? No, the dog is lying right there, looking at me" to "what's wrong with me?" to OMG EARTHQUAKE. The feeling itself is pretty unsettling. Kind of cool, though, as long as nothing bad happens.
In my office we didn't have any shaking or rattling, or any noise at all. It was just a very gentle leaning sensation, the sort of thing that makes you think maybe you're just a bit dizzy. Until everyone else stands up and simultaneously says "What that fuck was that?" or words to that effect.
I think we all went through that very quick mental checklist. Is the building falling over? Nope, seems to be OK now. Was it a bomb? Nope, no boom. Did one of the idiot truck drivers back into the loading dock at highway speed again? Nope, that makes quite a rumble too. Huh... earthquake, then.
I phoned a friend who works about 20 miles away, and she confirmed they noticed it at her office too, which seemed to narrow it down to either an earthquake or a nuclear bomb, and since we were both apparently still alive...
It was freaky, but worth about 10 minutes of discussion before everybody went back to work. Also we had some hairline cracks in the walls before this occurred, but they kind of closed up as a result of this. So do we subtract this earthquake repair from the total damage estimate?
I followed jessamyn's link to report this to the USGS. I didn't find a box to indicate a net improvement to the state of the building as a result of the quake, though.
I was sitting outside at lunch and felt the low concrete wall I was sitting on moving underneath me. My first thought was that it was an earthquake. But no one around me seemed to notice anything, so I was trying to figure out if it were either my imagination or my, er, "sitting muscles" getting jumpy.
They evacuated my office building, but I didn't clue in that it was the earthquake. I thought it might be a fire drill.