Feeling the 5.8 Quake in Maryland

I’ve lived in Southern California since 2000, but I’m embarrassed that the strongest earthquake of my life was the one I felt Tuesday while stationed on the East Coast.

C’mon California! We’ve got a reputation to maintain! A stronger earthquake striking the East Coast is bad for our image.

With mouths agape, East Coasters usually hang on my every word when I have matter-of-factly discussed life with earthquakes in California. Their images of earthquakes resemble Hollywood movies that show buildings crumbling like a boy destroying Leggos. They take pity on me as if I were some hoplessly wet and lost puppy for living near the San Andreas Fault.

So today, when a 5.8 earthquake struck the East Coast, my fellow soldiers were stunned when I calmly said, “It felt like a 4.5.”

(They didn’t get the joke when I suggested taking that Richter scale rating in an office pool. They also didn’t seem to appreciate my other joke that earthquakes are “very California” because, unlike hurricanes East Coasters understand, earthquakes are natural disasters that often occur during nice weather.)

Unless a well-publicized 5.9 strikes California soon, I risk losing my special status as “that guy” who lives with earthquakes on a seemingly hourly basis. Whenever the inevitable conversation of earthquakes comes up, saying “I’m from California” is a verbal trump card that causes everyone within earshot to fall silent and bow as through a monarch had entered the room.

The earthquake I felt on Fort Meade in Maryland was more of a shaker than what I’ve experienced in Southern California. I understood immediately it was an earthquake; I just couldn’t get my mind to digest that such a shaker was happening on the East Coast. Like a bad James Bond martini, a few people around me were both shaken and stirred by the experience.

I’m embarrassed that, as the token earthquake veteran from California, I wasn’t the guy who bellowed for people to get under their desks. Dumbstruck, we looked at each other until somebody else yelled to get under our desks.

Then we evacuated our building.

Then the order came to go home in case of aftershocks.

Then came traffic hell -- even before leaving post. Fort Meade and the nearby interstates was the “Carmaggedon” the closing of the 405 Freeway was supposed to create in July.

News reports said no one was hurt – amazing considering it struck the entire region – and little damage was inflicted. The one casualty of the traffic was my evening plan to drive to nearby Fort McHenry and jog on its scenic 1.1-mile perimeter track. The view of the fort and the Patapsco River were almost worth the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

C’mon California! We will lose our status as U.S. earthquake kings if we don’t produce a 5.9 soon!