It was an ordinary late summer afternoon, silky air, the sort of day you wished you didn’t have to spend inside. And, as it turned out, many of us didn’t have to.  Because at 1:50 p.m. we were turned from our homes and offices onto the street by a 5.8 magnitude earthquake.

Though we later learned we should have sheltered in place under our desks (ignoring every protective instinct we had), we headed outside.  And for the next few hours the streets of D.C. were filled with panicked and then (once we got used to the idea) bemused office dwellers.

I had leapt from my chair without purse or cell phone but (strangely) with the Diet Coke I was holding when the building began to shake. For the next hour I frantically tried to reach family members on borrowed phones. At home I found broken china and a closet ankle deep in photos, papers and clothes that had been shaken off their shelves.

The earthquake happened a year ago today. A year of record heat and drought — with the occasional hurricane and derecho thrown in.

The tremblor seemed strange at the time. But strange is becoming commonplace.



The “D.C. Earthquake Devastation” photo that made the rounds on the Internet last year.