During a peacful, perhaps blissful, sleep this morning I was awakened by the rumbling that has everyone rumbling in St. Louis. A 5.2 magnitude earthquake that started all the way over by the Illinois and Indiana border made it’s way to my place and scared the living crap out of me just before five this morning. I sat upright in bed and freaked like I was in a horror film for about a minute before the shaking and banging and grumbling stopped. I buried my head in the covers and hoped the magical infrared beam of the remote could still power the television on even through a thick layer of down and microfiber (which it did).
Mind you, I once had dreamed of living in San Fransisco. After this morning, this dream has revealed it’s self as a latent worst fear. The earthquake has uncovered irreversible (latent until now) damage that I evidently incurred in fourth grade. Some guy predicted that St. Louis was going to be swallowed up between techtonic plates, does anyone remember that? For my fourth grade self, this was terrifying and completely apocolyptic. We had earthquake drills (they made sure to point out that we needed to cover our spinal cord!), lessons about quakes and aftershocks (did you know that the initial quake starts the damage and the aftershocks often cause more?), and I pretty am sure there was some disaster preparation talk all around town that somehow seeped in (I am pretty sure because I remember thinking of building what could be considered a fallout shelter).
No more San Fran for me. I woke up and within moments realized that earthquakes are my biggest fear. Some people are afraid of flying - I am afraid of earthquakes. You are taking a calculated risk when stepping on a plane, how the hell are you supposed to know when the earth is going to start moving your shit around? Anyhow, my dog is now on probation for not offering warning signs like a good animal in nature evidently is supposed to, and I was relegated to running around like I was still afraid of the dark until the sun came out this morning so the Earth is also on probation. I am going to buy stock in styrofoam on Earth Day if it breaks this probation and send another aftershock my way (we had an afterschock of 4.5 shortly after 10 a.m. which sent me running from my deak with tears welling in my eyes).
A pretty cool aftershock is being discussed on the St Louis Bloggers Guild site, where they are reporting that the ‘quake news was broken by local bloggers on Twitter!
**Update: With all of the earthquake trauma I failed to realize that today marks the News-Bitch’s one year anniversary. Any suggestions for a celebratory post?**
10:55 am on April 18th, 2008 1
I was a freshman in high school that December when what’s-his-name predicted the New Madrid fault was going to cause a HUGE earthquake. I vividly remember sitting around with my equally dorky friends writing parody Christmas carols about it (a la Weird Al). God, we were lame.
12:13 pm on April 18th, 2008 2
I totally remember the earthquake-swallowing-st. louis thing. I think I was in 6th grade and I was scared to death. At my grade school, we had earthquake drills where we all lept out of our seats and crouched under our desks. Seeing as I was about 5′8″ in junior high, it wasn’t the easiest task in the world.
I also remeber in 7th or 8th grade, someone predicted the end of the world. At the time it was supposed to happen, some mid-pubescent jerk kid turned off the lights in the science lab. I screamed bloody murder and started praying. I’ve yet to live that one down.
I slept through the one at 4 something this morning, but I was at work (in an ancient building on the 3rd floor) at 10 during the after shock. I’ll agree, it was some scary stuff. I don’t blame you for changing your mind about California…
1:59 pm on April 18th, 2008 3
Ironically my brother (who lives in San Diego) were discussing the drawbacks of where we live. I said all he had to worry about was an earthquake. And then we have one here. What are the odds?
I remember the Big One predictions. I bought earthquake insurance for my house and have carried it since then. I hope I don’t have to use it.
9:01 pm on February 26th, 2010 4
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