First-Person Account of This Morning's Earthquake in Illinois

I'm originally from Wayne County, Illinois. We moved to Gibson County, Indiana, in the early 1990s. Gibson County is in the southwestern corner of Indiana, just about 20 miles north of Evansville, Indiana. While the military has sent me and my brother many places over the years, and we no longer live close to home, my sister and my parents still live on our family horse farm in Indiana.

In the 1980s, when I was in grade school, while most kids were having drills on what to do in case of a nuclear attack, schools in my area were doing tornado and earthquake drills. Local authorities have been predicting a massive earthquake for as long as I can remember, as that area of the country sits right on the New Madrid fault. There have been quite a few earthquakes in the area, but none near as massive as officials are predicting.

I was awakened around 5 a.m. this morning by a text message from my sister, telling me that there was an earthquake, and I needed to call home. I called back, and was able to get a first-person account from her.

My sister and mom work second shift at a local manufacturing facility. They got home from work this morning and my mom went to bed, while my sister sat in the living room on the main floor of their home to chill out and watch television. Around 4:30 this morning, my sister said that she heard a loud rumbling and growling noise, and believed that it was another tornado. (As you may know, this part of southern Indiana has seen a lot of tornadoes in recent history, and everyone is still very skittish after the November 2005 tornado that killed 23 people in Evansville, including one of my high school classmates).

It took about 10 seconds for my sister to figure out what was happening, and once the house began to shake, she jumped in the living room doorway. She said that she felt the earthquake for at least a minute and a half. While this was going on, my parents came out of their bedroom, and ran downstairs to the living room to see what was going on. After the earthquake, my sister told me that nothing in the house fell or was broken, but the pictures on the wall were moving, and her Pepsi can moved across the coffee table.

My parents checked on the horses and other animals, and discovered that they are fine. In addition, the house and all of the outbuildings are fine - there was no real damage to their property. They told me that there have been two or three sizeable aftershocks so far. One of my sister's friends lives in Princeton, Indiana, and told me that part of his floor in the second story of his house caved in during the earthquake. My dad said that his commute to his job is taking a bit longer than normal, as there are inspectors out checking the roads and bridges in the area, to make sure they are safe for travel.

Right now, this earthquake is being measured at around 5.4 on the Richter scale. This is not the worst earthquake that the area has felt, but it is the worst one that they've experienced since 1968. Reports of the effects of this earthquake are coming from places as far away as Michigan, Atlanta, Georgia, Louisville, Kentucky, and Memphis. My mother-in-law in Independence, Missouri even felt this earthquake this morning as she was getting up to go to work. Hopefully the worst is over, and the aftershocks will dissipate.