Whoa... Earthquake!!

Yesterday, I woke up to a beautiful morning with cool air and blue skies. I got my first text of the day from my husband recognizing our anniversary of 6 years since we started dating. I jumped on the computer, and noticed on the Yahoo news that a 5.3 earthquake had struck southeast Colorado, and I called my momma to see if she was okay. She felt nothing, and slept through it. I had a Scentsy vendor-blendor that evening, and I wanted to bring a prospective recruit to the event. On the way to the out of my neighborhood, I noticed that it was looking a bit more like fall outside, and I had a bottom of the pit feeling, that something wasn't quite right that day. I went to my friend's apartment to allow our girls to play, and luckily I managed to grab lunch prior to arriving at her complex.

We were in the yellow outer portion

My friends apartment complex is a small building, two stories high. There were four of us, and five little girls playing in a room at the end of the hallway, when it felt/heard like a stampede. We looked at each other confused, and initially I thought the girls were stomping around all at once. But, then the walls started to shake, and I looked outside and the ground was rolling. I felt like we were on a rollercoaster ride, and our ride was about to bottom out from underneath us.

My husband and I was stationed in Twentynine Palms, CA prior to this duty station, and the Marines came from all over to train, and I was used to the mortar rounds rattling my windows, or the small tremors we got. So, within an instant, I thought we were under mortar fire. (It was really loud in the building.) The shaking wasn't always continuous, it started out slow, and got more intense, less intense, and then more intense. The pictures on the walls were swaying-- and then, I yelled, "get in the doorway!" My brain finally registered, that it was indeed an earthquake. My friend just wanted to high-tail it out of the complex, in case it collapsed. We knew the building was NOT equipped for an earthquake.

I yelled frantically to grab my baby (my two year old), since she was still in the other room where she was previously playing. We all grabbed the kids, and rushed out the door down the steps. (By this time, the quake stopped.) I was shaking for a good minute, scanning the kids to see if they were okay, and we placed blankets on the parking lot, just in cased the aftershocks happened. I instantly called my husband, but the calls weren't going through. I tried calling my momma, and no luck. Amazingly, Facebook on my cell phone did, and I was able to alert my friends what was going on, and that I was okay.

I was just so thankful that I wasn't at my house when it happened, and I was among some good friends. Luckily, the neighbor from down below had the news on, and we were able to go and see the earthquake coverage. We were literally within the 30 mile radius of the epicenter of the quake. I was like, "Omg!! It is right next to us!" We just experienced a 5.9 earthquake. I don't care if you experience quakes or small tremors in California, but if you're not prepared for this (especially the buildings) it feels more like an attack occured than a quake. All I knew was I was not ready to be back in a building for a while, lol.

Getting through to my husband was difficult. After an hour, I was able to get a hold of him from my friend's phone, and I was so relieved he was okay. I finally calmed down for the better part of the day, and I felt a small aftershock when I was settling down to get some sleep for the night.

So, there you have it, my quake story.