Last week when the big one hit I was in the mall with a friend. I was walking so I didn't feel it, but we heard a loud noise and turned around to see the TVs falling off the walls of the store. When we stopped walking, that's when we felt the movement. After the earthquake ended, we continued with our shopping like normal, because that's what you do in an earthquake...just continue life as usual. But about 20 minutes later, when we were buying ice cream, we realized it wasn't just like normal this time. All of a sudden all of the workers in the ice cream shop started taking their things and the money out of the cash register and running towards the escalator, without finishing giving us our ice cream! No one would tell us what was going on as we watched the hysterical people in the mall desperately rushing to the stairs, until someone finally informed us that they had sounded the tsunami alert and we had to evacuate.
That was the point when I started getting nervous. My instincts told me to bolt, trampling the weak and slow as I fled from the mall, but my brain and my friend told me to just calm down and wait, because fighting to get out wasn't going to help anyone. So that's what we did. We were some of the last ones to leave the mall and had to walk about 6 blocks to a safe zone up the hill because we were too close to the beach. We evacuated along with the entire city and had to wait in the safe zone over an hour in case a tsunami came.
So in the end, the tsunami never came, the alert was turned off, and the people went back to their homes to prepare their emergency evacuation bag in case it ever happened again...and with good reason. Since then, it's been shaking here multiple times every day, some as big as 6.0 and some too small to feel. No one knows if we're just waiting for the big one and it's going to wipe out the city or if these smaller ones are alleviating the pressure and there's nothing to worry about. But when it comes, I'm sure going to be ready!
