Remember the 2011 East Coast Earthquake? It Happened One Year Ago Today

One year ago today, I went out to lunch with my mother at , drove my car home and noticed, at one point on the way, other cars wobbling on Columbia Road.

Then the text messages started pummeling my phone.

An earthquake had just hit the East Coast.

Those wobbling cars weren’t just dodging my mean driving.

As we do in the news business, I sites with U.S. Geological Survey confirmation of the quake.

And then I rushed over to my son’s day care and when I found him, safe, I held him in my arms.

As far as freak occurrences go, our area came out unscathed on this one.

No injuries were reported in Howard County as a result of the 1:51 p.m. magnitude 5.8 quake. Its epicenter was in Virginia, reported the U.S. Geological Survey, and its tremors, wobbles and rattles were felt across the D.C./Baltimore region.

It shook us up, literally and figuratively.

Laura Morena-Hill, in Columbia, called the quake one of the “scariest few minutes of my life.”

Eugene So, whose parents, Michael and Min So, own the downtown Columbia café, Lakeside, was a bit more blasé.

He said he came back into the restaurant as everyone was evacuating to make himself a sandwich.

“I was hungry,” he said at the time. “Whatever. Was a roof going to come off on me? The Lord’s going to have to try a little harder to kill me.”

What do you remember about the earthquake last year? Share your experiences/thoughts in comments.

See last year’s coverage:

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