5.4

5-7 seconds. That's about as long as it lasted. 5-7 seconds.

I knew sooner or later we'd experience an earthquake, seeing as we are in California, and today was the day. I was in the shower (yes, the shower, of all places) and had just picked up my face wash bottle when I felt a bit of a jolt, I guess. My initial thought was that it was a truck bumping/passing by, as we do live right by a semi-busy road. But the longer it lasted, I knew it was a quake. So what did I do? Just stood there. In a glass shower. And "watched" the shaking and listened to the house creak and crack. As soon as it stopped, I stood there and yelled "HONEY!!!!!" as if to expect Burin to come "rescue" me or something. So I grabbed my towel and ran out of the shower and ran downstairs to where Burin was. The whole time, he was down here yelling "Brandi!!! Where are you?!?!" But of course I couldn't hear him for the shower.

Burin had gone to work for a little while this morning after having been on call last night, and got home and got into his comfy clothes, a t-shirt and undies (teehee). He was sitting in one of the chairs in the living room and he said with the initial jolts, it felt like someone had hit him in the back, or pushed the back of the chair and made him jump. When he figured out what it was, it didn't take him too long to get his jeans back on! I think he felt it more on the ground floor, which makes sense I guess. He said he had felt an earthquake in Thailand a long time ago and this one was worse.

But man, it was crazy! I was shaken up for a good two hours afterwards. Nothing fell off the counters or anything here and as reported on the news, there has been no major structural damage and no injuries anywhere. There has been some cosmetic damage and some groceries off the shelves at stores closer to the epicenter, but nothing too bad, thank goodness. I'm just glad I wasn't in one of the tall buildings in downtown LA, where they said the buildings were swaying. Can you imagine.

So after a few minutes when things calmed down, I called mom and told her about it, and then went to very quickly finish my shower because I was afraid aftershocks were coming, but we never felt anymore. They said that this one was the worst in 14 years, since the Northridge one back in 1994, which was a 6.1 and killed something like 72 people and injured hundreds more.

Hopefully this will be our last quake to experience, and if not our last, maybe it's the worst we'll experience.