6.4 Earthquake in Caracas

Here is a link to the news story: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32816049/ns/world_news-americas/

This morning I took a group from the Embassy out on a City Orientation Tour. As we were driving around the city and I was pointing out various malls, hotels, parks etc. someone asked me, quite off handedly, if there are ever any earthquakes in Venezuela. At first I said I don't remember any, but then someone reminded me that we there was an earthquake here a few months ago, and then I remembered it.

It was at about 5:00 am and I was laying in bed and I felt the bed shaking, I remember being irritated with the dogs because it felt like one of them was leaning against the bed and scratching, causing the bed to shake. Then I remembered that I put the dogs outside earlier in the evening because they were acting strange, pacing around and whatnot. I sat bolt upright in bed and could hear the windows rattling. I said "Mary! Its an earthquake!" and she said "No its not, its just the wind, go back to sleep." Well I was vindicated when we got to work and the news about the mild earthquake was going around. Obviously, when you are not sure if it is an earthquake or the wind, it is not a real strong quake. I quickly forgot about that earthquake, since it was one of the least traumatic experiences I have had here.

Well, today we had another quake. Once again the dogs were acting strange. Lola was trying to dig a hole in the marble floor. She was totally focused on a spot in the den and was just going to town digging with her front paws. Obviously, she made no progress in the marble floor, but she drove nuts while I was trying to watch "Ocean's 13" on HBO, so I put her outside. A little while later, after the movie ended, I was sitting on the toilet, reading a book about WW II and suddenly felt the building shaking. This time there was no mistaking that the building was really shaking, an effect most likely magnified somewhat by my perch on the commode. It was raining really hard, like sheets of rain, when the shaking started, and it had been raining like that for about an hour to an hour and a half. When it rains like that here, mudslides are quite common (I did a previous post about the mudslides about a year ago) and as I sat there wondering what was going on I thought it was a mild earthquake and was slightly amused, not worried at all because the shaking was quite mild. But the shaking got stronger and stronger until there was what felt like a hard jolt, like the building hit something. At that point I was thinking mudslide; that the building was about to slide off the hill (we are built into the side of a really steep hill) or that mud was crashing down onto the building. I jumped up, took stock of my delicate predicament, decided I did not want to be found dead in the rubble sitting on the toilet, grabbed a hand full of toilet paper and did a "rush job" as I ran into the hall outside the bedroom. I stood there for a few moments and realized that the shaking had stoped. I looked pretty riduculous standing there with my pants half way down and a hand full of toilet paper. The crisis passed, nothing happened and I pulled my self together so to speak. You can always count on me to keep a cool head in a crisis.