The last time I was in a building that shook I was in Tower One of the World Trade Center on the 29th floor, thankfully not higher up. My day ended with no injuries to anyone I knew, but of course not to thousands of others. It's history what happened on September 11, 2001.
I remember once in early April 1982 it snowed in New York City. Our second daughter had just been born, and I distinctly remember my wife holding her up at the storm door to watch me shovel the snow that wasn't going to be around for too long. I waved.
I don't remember the exact date, and I wonder if I'll remember the exact date when the earthquake is mentioned in subsequent years. I remember the months and years of major blackouts in NYC, but not the dates. (There were three.) I won't be buying an "I Survived" T-shirt just to remember the date of an earthquake.
My first earthquake memory was the one in Vermont. It was early in the morning on October 7, 1983 and woke us up. I heard a very loud bang at the cottage back door. I thought a deer had kicked it, and went back to sleep. Nothing rattled, and nothing fell off any shelves. We never even looked out the window at the lake
It wasn't until listening to the very local radio station that was housed in a tiny brown building up the road on Route 30 (Seth Warner Memorial highway, commemorating a very successful rear guard action during the Revolutionary War by Seth Warner) that we heard we had experienced an earthquake. Holy cow. Really?
A very cooperative soul at the Lake St. Catherine Association, Jerremy Jones, kindly answered my inquiry about the radio station.. He identified it as WVNR, a station that played classic country music. It was only a 1,000 watt AM station at 1340 on the dial, owned by Loud Media, that served the towns surrounding Lake St. Catherine, principally Poultney.
I remember that morning's radio personality making a joke of the earthquake with imagined dialogue between Sally Field and Burt Reynolds, who at the time were a very hot item, with Burt asking Sally if she felt the earth move.
I thought is was hilarious. I imagined a young DJ hoping to make it to a stand up comedy club in a major city, maybe New York, or getting a job at a bigger wattage radio station. I have no idea if there were many listeners who got the illusion between an earthquake and Burt really making Sally happy in the morning with earth moving sex.
Shortly after when the newest earthquake shook through New York and the tristate area I was on the phone with someone from Manhattan. I learned that they too felt the movement.
I could tell I was talking to a young female. Surely she and I were raised watching different movies. I repeated the Vermont experience and the DJ's joke. No reaction. Zip. Nada. My guess is she knew nothing of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, and didn't associate great sex with feeling like the earth moved. Oh well, forty years later the same story doesn't hold up well.
As for the experience here at my Long Island home my computer monitor shook for a good 10-15 seconds. I felt the house shake and heard the window behind me rattle. I was nervous. I opened the front door to see if anyone was in the street wondering what happened. I saw our cat Socks racing past me outdoors.
I went upstairs to ask my wife if we just had an earthquake. She of course felt it too. Nothing yet on the TV but morning talk shows and yapping. After a few minutes my wife said that the news online was confirming an earthquake. The TV news soon caught up.
No damage, other than to the mind that something happened that could have been much worse. Someone posted a photo of an upended backyard chair on Long Island as evidence of the earthquake's power—which wasn't much compared to ones we've heard about in other countries that topple buildings and twist roadways, like the recent one in Taiwan.
When the Trade Center was smacked by a hijacked 767 the building shook, and swayed a bit, but then stopped swaying quickly. I was pushed forward on my office chair and drawers opened up. A sky full of debris started falling. We were on the southern side. The place hit the northern side. I had a friend who was a conference room on the north side who heard the whine of something approaching. Then smack!
No one really knew what had happened. I said to my manager it was either a bomb, a construction accident, or an earthquake. And I didn't think it was an earthquake. Only when we finally emerged from the building did we know what happened.
The Vermont quake in 1983 was 5,2, and in the NYT story a geophysicist, Dr. Jack Oliver from Cornell University said the measured strength at 5.2 was, "a very substantial one for an Eastern earthquake."
What I know about Richter readings is that there are expressed exponentially. Thus, 5.2 is not just .4 greater than 4.8. So imagine when the number hits 7.0. That's when the buildings start to fall.
Tomorrow's eclipse will of course eclipse that number of people who share a common event. If we all survive.
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