Buffalo, with its proximity to the Canada border, is an international gateway. Of course, sometimes bad things cross the border too. Today the area was shaken by the after-effects of a 5.0 magnitude quake that centered north of Montreal and Ottawa, Canada. Naturally, it has everyone and the media jabbering tonight.
The Buffalo News has some good initial Twitter-based coverage, multimedia, and interviews regarding today’s tremor, but since many Buffalonians are clamoring to share their story, I figure I’d share mine:
I was at my computer this afternoon around 1:45 when the house began to shake. It immediately caused a woozy, sick feeling to come over my stomach as I realized this could be an earthquake. Most unnerving were the closet doors that began swinging and banging against each other (these doors hang from a magnetic track). Ok, I’ll admit, the photo is rigged. The doors didn’t fly off their tracks, but it was a good attention grabber, eh?
What an awful feeling of powerlessness and loss of control. Your world is shaking, bucking, and lurching and there’s nothing you can do about it. While you want to run to safety, outdoors (and away from tall objects!) is probably the least unsafe place to be. I feel for the residents of Haiti and Chile who earlier this year had their nations turned upside down by quakes. Imagine what it must be like when the earth is lurching at a magnitude greater than the 5.0 after-effect we felt today.
Gratefully, aside from mass lake effect snow, Buffalo doesn’t get hit with a lot of natural disasters. But today was a bit of a reminder how devastating mother nature can be.
This is more typical of a Buffalo disaster. NWA DC-9 sitting on its tail after the October 2006 Surpise.
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