Around 2 p.m. today I was speaking to Charles and Bridget Ulibarri via Skype. The Ulibarris are considering a new cross-cultural ministry site after being involved in a number of different ministries in Equatorial New Guinea. That’s in Africa, by the way. And the speak Spanish there…weird, but not as weird as what happened while I was talking to them.
My parents’ house began to shake. Really shake. Little metal tractors and antique toys started to shift and make noise in the shelf behind me. My mother came in and said, “Did you feel that!” Yeah, I said, that was an earthquake, and a pretty significant one at that. My estimate was at least 4.2. Turns out it was a 5.8 quake, with the epicenter in a small town in Virginia, only 83 miles southwest of Washington D.C. Of course, experiencing an earthquake in this part of the world is like having a couple of inches of snow in the south. We don’t know how to deal with it, so everybody panics and makes a much bigger deal out of it than needs to be made. It quickly became the main point of conversation for everyone from the local postman where I mailed some t-shirts, to talk radio hosts.
In Mexico City, people still remember the mega-quake of 8.0 that leveled large portions of Mexico City in 1985. Many recognize the many high ramps, overpasses and concrete interchanges built in recent years in Mexico City as the first real post-earthquake construction. People have been hesitant to build high highways and skyscrapers. In Mexico, it’s taken 20 years to get over their last big earthquake.
My mother was talking to her new neighbor, and she said something to the effect that earthquakes will increase in the last days. Yeah, maybe even in places like the east coast.
Our friend Hannah Galloway felt it in South Carolina. Apparently it was felt as far north as Boston. Oh, and there’s a hurricane coming up the east coast in a few days. Better get back to Mexico, where there are only active volcanoes and such.
We felt it in New Hampshire, 8 minutes after it struck VA!