So another frightening thing happened last week and that was the earthquake that shook the east coast.
It was one of the worst feelings ever. I do not want to experience it again even though this wasn’t my first experience of an earthquake… read this from 2005.
Bill had meetings in the afternoon so I ate lunch at my desk. Then I felt like I was going to pass out even though I was sitting down… I felt all dizzy and that something was moving. It was the vertigo like feeling that a lot of people experienced with the first rumbles as you don’t know what it is. It was almost immediately that everyone was saying “WHAT IS THAT?!” “WHAT IS GOING ON?!” A PC on a desk next to mine was rocking and my chair was bouncing. The feeling that I could only describe it like was it felt like I was sitting on a waterbed. It was very unsettling to be feeling this on the 30th floor of a building that is next to the World Trade Center site. It was absolutely awful.
It was in about 30 seconds we all picked up our stuff and ran to our meeting area and made the decision to evacuate down the fire escape stairs. Of course, in this time there are many things and visions going through your head and none of them are nice. I tried to convince myself that maybe the kitchen on the upper level had had some sort of explosion. I thought it may have been an earthquake BUT things didn’t rock and shake like I expected… they rolled.
So the stairs beckoned and we ran down them so fast that we did the whole 30 floors in about 10 minutes.
When we got downstairs, there was no cell coverage and my legs were shaking like I was freezing. I didn’t know whether it was nerves or from the motion of running downstairs but I couldn’t stop them. Also, I was not puffed or sweaty or anything – I had done it on pure adrenaline. Just ran. Adrenaline is crazy stuff and I couldn’t really collect my thoughts.
Someone then said it had been an earthquake. We went to our evacuation area and then decided to head back. All in all, it was about an hour of waiting and calming down. In that time, I also couldn’t get hold of Bill. It ends up he was in a meeting on the 39th floor and didn’t evacuate. It was SO good to get his text message (calls still couldn’t go through) and as I went back to my desk it was a case of just trying to think about normal things other than what had just happened.
There is a story on NY1 about our buildings on the day.
When I got home, I just collapsed on the couch. It felt so good to be home and I was truly exhausted from the panic and adrenaline. Bill and I spent the night lazing around very quietly. I thought I felt great after running down the stairs though this sentiment would not be repeated on Wednesday or Thursday when I could hardly walk. My legs felt like they had weights on them and were so sore. All in all, now I guess it is one thing crossed off my ‘have to experience’ list but I wish I didn’t have to experience it at work.