Yesterday, I was thinking about how nice it was that I don’t
have to worry about tornadoes this spring.
Living my entire life previous to now in Tornado Alley, gave me a higher
than average exposure to the storms. In
fact, based on this
list I found, I have lived in the states ranked 2nd, 6th,
and 10th for sheer tornado numbers.
Tornadoes have the highest winds of any storms, some (guess where these happen) can have winds
of over 300 miles per hour. Luckily, the
Midwest has sirens to warn us when they are coming and “committed weathermen”
who literally get 2
full hours of TV time whenever one is spotted (I can’t help but think a
tornado outbreak to them is like Christmas morning- not that it isn’t important
information ).
Over the years, I been in several basements, hallways, and closets waiting for the storm to pass, and while tornadoes can certainly kill you and/or flatten the building (or town ) you are in, I know what to do in a tornado and have become accustomed to dealing with it.
Over the years, I been in several basements, hallways, and closets waiting for the storm to pass, and while tornadoes can certainly kill you and/or flatten the building (or town ) you are in, I know what to do in a tornado and have become accustomed to dealing with it.
However, last night at 3 am, I encountered my new natural
disaster: earthquakes. I once met a guy from California when taking
the train back to Iowa on a gloomy day in April, and he asked me when tornado
season was. I said, “Now,” and he looked
completely panicked. Then he figured I’d
react in a similar fashion to earthquakes.
Turns out, he was right.
I was dreaming and then all of a sudden I was awake and very
disoriented as my bed was moving around… a lot.
It was really disconcerting. While
I stayed in my bed (which as it turns out is the recommended course of action
if nothing will fall on your head), my roommate apparently bolted down the
stairs and stood in the bathroom door jam, although she insisted that she was
concerned for my personal safety.
It didn’t last that long, but I had such an adrenaline rush
from being jolted awake that I could not go back to sleep. It didn’t help that I was also thinking about
the construction of my house (from 1929) because brick, apparently, is not good
for earthquakes. I took some solace in
the fact that, since the house is over 80 years old, it has probably survived
many of these.
By 5 am, I gave up on sleeping and just graded some
papers. Then, at 6:30, I went for my
morning run and was leered at and got kisses blown to me (lucky me) by some idiot in a car.
Gross.
According to Bulgaria, it had a magnitude of 5.8. Turkey claims 6.4, but I doubt it, seeing as
how the most damage it did to our house was slant all of our pictures. Luckily, no one was seriously injured
(according to the news, most people were admitted to the hospital for blood
pressure problems due to the stress) and most everything is still standing. This is especially good since the 6.0
earthquake in Italy a couple of days ago had a much worse outcome, probably,
based on my limited knowledge of earthquakes, because Italy’s quake occurred
nearer to the surface than ours (5 km vs. 9.4 km).
