What an adventure we had just last night: our first earthquake in Puerto Rico!
It wasn't anything life-threatening, but it did wake us up while we were sleeping. The tremor occurred just after midnight today approximately 35 miles north of Hatillo, Puerto Rico (this city is 58 miles west of San Juan). At this location, the Richter Scale measured 6.4, but at the center of San Juan, the reading was about 3.0.
 |
| Map with tectonic plates outlined and the epicenter location (star) |
 |
| Closer image of epicenter location. San Juan is at the far right white dot. |
Ethan and I had just fallen asleep before it happened. Then, I felt the bed wiggling, as if Ethan was moving his legs around. I said, "Ethan, stop moving the bed so much!" to which he replied, "That wasn't me! I thought it was you!" The tremor last over 20 seconds, so we intensely began to wonder why the bed was moving by itself and how this could be happening.
Let me take a step back and tell you all about some recent goings-on at the Faryna household. Recently, we have had some feline visitors over at our house. There has been a friendly stray cat that we have named Ghost who visits our patio about every other day. Whenever I see him, I go outside, pet his head and say hello. He usually sticks around for a while, smelling all of our plants, lounging on the patio, and trying to get into our apartment. I sternly tell him "No" when he tries to enter. Well one day, while we were both in the back of the apartment, he snuck into the kitchen. I wandered into the kitchen and who knows how long he had been there, but I caught him darting back out the door. To my knowledge, he has not come back into the house.
 |
| This is the only picture I have of him on our patio. Ghost is so quick to run away, I couldn't get another shot! |
Over the holidays, we were taking care of our neighbor's cat, Gigi. Over the course of ten days, I would visit him twice a day, feed him, clean his litter box, brush his hair, and play with him. It really made me want a pet! :) On Christmas day, we let him come into our living room to check the place out. He loved it! Lately, he has been welcoming himself to our house whenever our neighbor lets him out to get some fresh air. It is quite cute - he has been exploring more and more of our rooms as we keep forgetting to shut the doors so he doesn't sneak in there! But he is a good kitty, he hasn't chewed anything up or relieved himself anywhere, so I love it when he comes over to say hello.
 |
| Gigi |
OK, back to the main story. Taking these two pieces of information about the cats into account, and understanding that I was half asleep when we felt the tremors, I immediately thought that one of the cats had found their way into our bedroom and were shaking the bed! I then exclaimed, "Ethan! Is it one of the cats?! Check under the bed!" Ethan jumped to his feet and turned on the light. He peeked under the bed. Nothing. As he was standing there, he stopped feeling the movement and thought maybe something was wrong with the bed. Haha! At this point, the tremors had stopped, and we finally came to our senses. Was it an earthquake? We quickly checked facebook to see if anyone had posted anything. Sure enough, several of our Puerto Rican friends had posts reading:
"Temblor fuerte en San Juan," and "Se sintió el temblor acá en mi edificio," meaning, "Strong earthquake in San Juan," and "The earthquake was felt here in my building." Were we relieved! We weren't crazy after all! We continued checking for updates and some of our American friends here also felt the earthquake: "Just went through my first earthquake! Everything in house was wiggling! Very cool!" which we totally agree with. Another couple did the exact same thing we did: she thought her hubby was shaking the bed and he said it wasn't him! Haha!
We were very glad that we weren't injured and nothing was damaged and also relieved that there was no tsunami warning afterwards! That would have really freaked me out!
Have you ever experienced an earthquake? What happened?
