Big Happenings on the Big Island

On Wednesday I was talking to my clerk, Geneva, while she tried to track down a social worker for me on her phone. As I was turned around to talk to her everything around her kind of shook. At first I thought it was a trick of my eyes, but then my clerk looked at me all panicky and said "Earthquake!"

I looked it up in the US Geological Survey website and apparently earthquakes on the Big Island are pretty common - there's been one every other day for the last two weeks! Wednesday's earthquake was almost a 4.0 - but it was so short that hardly anyone else at work noticed!

The first time I ever experienced an earthquake it was on the Big Island. I was in Hilo visiting with my mother in October 2006. I was asleep in the hotel and my mother had already gotten up. I was shaken awake by the 6.7 magnitude earthquake. At first I thought it was my mom trying to wake me up, but when I opened my eyes and no mom in sight and everything moving I realized it was an earthquake! So I spread eagled myself on the bed, thinking very rationally, that if I should fall through the floor I could spread the impact by being spread eagled. (I am calm and rational under duress!) When my mother came up and told me there was an earthquake I allegedly responded by saying I wanted to take a shower. My family always laughs that in the aftermath of an earthquake and while we waited for a possible tsunami, I wanted to take a shower. Ha. ha. Only one natural disaster at a time for me! Besides, I would like to be clean if I'm going to be swept away in a tsunami.

So far I've experienced an earthquake, a tsunami and I live on the side of an erupting volcano while living in Hawaii. Big happenings on the Big Island indeed!