No, Mom! Not the shelf!!!
We had an intense earthquake late yesterday afternoon and although we are all just fine, it was quite scary!
I was in the kitchen about to make rice in the rice cooker, Jaime was on the couch with Naomi watching a movie and Massimo was in his room. When the house started rolling I stopped and put the bag of rice down to assess how serious this quake was going to be and then it hit. The entire house jolted and I ran into Massimo's room, grabbed him, and held him underneath me directly next to his bed. Another jolt hit and then Jaime and Naomi were right next to us, Naomi underneath him, protected. Another jolt and at that moment I thought our house was going to cave in on us. Everything was falling and the sound was so loud! It continued to roll for a few more seconds and then that was it.
We ran outside and all of the neighbors were doing the same thing. We all were asking each other if they were OK and then we see the house behind us has a water pipe broken and water is spraying out into the street. The girl that lives in that house came out running with her hands covering her head, sobbing.... It was all quite traumatic, but in the end, we are all ok. One house down the street was launched forward enough to make it fall off of it's foundation. I think that was the worst case in the entire area.
Here is a link to an article about the quake:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/health/la-me-eurekaquake-pictures,0,7894540.photogallery?index=la-me-eurekaquake7x_kw0rorn.jpg
a couple of shots here in my house afterwards... I should have taken more, but was trying to console the kids and figure out what we should do... No tsunami warning was issued, so that was good... one less thing to worry about :)
All of the stuff you see on my desk, below, was on the shelf before the quake....
Glad to be back to normal now. We have our power, gas, and water heater back in working order... So glad everyone is ok!!
