The MA Earthquake This Past Weekend Brings Back Memories

This doesn't happen very often. New England experienced an earthquake yesterday and it was, by our standards here in the East, a pretty big one! Thousands of people reported feeling a 3.6 magnitude earthquake that originated in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, according to a story from boston.cbslocal.com. Small by earthquake standards, but for us New Englanders, that's scary! People in Southern NH, Haverhill, Andover, all around the Merrimack Valley felt it. My mother in law lives in Enfield, CT and she said SHE felt it!

I remember once when I was on vacation with our family for my husband's brother's wedding in Los Angeles, California. We had 3 out of four of the kids with us, the youngest being about 7 and the oldest, my son Colin, who was around 16 at the time. We got a fancy hotel so we could swim in the pool and the kids would be entertained. The room was also on the 35th floor of this massive hotel. All was good and we were all having a good time.

We had just gotten back from dinner and we were winding down from a busy day in L.A. when everything in the room started to shake. The lamps were shaking, the TV shook and I was in a panic. What were we going to do? How were we going to get out? My step-daughter, Maya, is fearless and I remember her saying, "An EARTHQUAKE! COOL!" She was about 15 at the time. The LAST thing I remember is it being "cool." There was nothing cool about it, to me!

Truthfully, it didn't last very long, I would say about :30 seconds - 1 minute. It doesn't sound long, but think about it for the next minute. Everything around you is shaking and you are on the 35th floor of a hotel in L.A. with your kids. Yup. Terrified. When it stopped, I wasn't sure that I would be able to stay in the room, but we were all exhausted and I thought that this was just something that people in L.A. deal with all the time, like we do snowstorms, so, I hunkered down in the hotel bed and went to sleep. There were no after-shocks, thank God!

I don't remember how big that earthquake was, but I think it was bigger than the one we had here. Or ... maybe I was just live too far from Buzzard's Bay.