Earthquake

No, our earthquake today wasn't as bad as this picture! But you'd think it was by the frenzied the media coverage. Good grief.

I was in a local Starbucks doing catechesis when it hit. (Yes, I often do catechesis in Starbucks and locations like it. Part of the fun of not having your own church building!) I was discussing the First Commandment with a young lady when the shaking started. Things did shake quite a bit for about 30 seconds. At first, since we were on a street corner, I thought it was just a truck going past. But when it kept going and got more and more intense, we knew it was an earthquake. My catechumen was a little startled. I thought it was cool. The place emptied out pretty quick, but after a minute or so, we just started back in with our discussion. My catechumen noted how interesting it was that it hit while we were talking about the First Commandment.

I was interested to hear how big it was and where the epicenter was after we finished, but I was not really prepared for the media overkill - though I guess I should have been. A magnitude 5.8 quake isn't a big deal in California, but it is here. The news reports said that the recent Japanese quake was 50,000 times stronger than ours - wow! That would be scary.

Bottom line: there was some minor damage scattered about, but nothing major. The biggest problem was everybody leaving work early and so clogging up all the roads.