Earthquake

The East Coast got a little dose of shaking earth, yesterday. I didn't really think too much of it; growing up in California, earthquakes are a common occurrence and only really merit attention when they get big enough to bring down a building or civil works project. That said, earthquakes in the middle of the Pacific hold another danger: tsunamis.

It was almost two years ago that Tutuila got slammed by a large tsunami. It was following a 8.0 earthquake between American Samoa and Samoa. A few different harbors on the island got slammed by the waves and the island is still trying to recover from the damage.

So it was a bit of a surprise when I was settling into my office this morning and felt the office building start to sway. Turns out we had a 5.1 earthquake about 200 miles away. Not enough to trigger the tsunami alarms that now dot our coast line, but enough to remind me that our hold on this rock in the middle of the Pacific is a little precarious.