Monday, August 29, 2011

Earthquakes and Hurricanes and Bears....Oh My!

I thought moving back east would be a much safer place to live because all that ever really happens here as far as severe, hazardous weather conditions are mainly snow blizzards during the winter. But nooooooooooooooooo, now that I’ve moved back east we’re experiencing EARTHQUAKES and HURRICANES.

Having lived in Florida for 20 years, I’m use to hurricanes. So I was not really freaked out about the grand entrance of Irene. Like a boy scout, I’ve learned how to be well prepared for hurricanes and that the weather reports will often present the storms much bigger than they really are as a safety precaution.

But EARTHQUAKES????

Last Wednesday afternoon, whilst standing in my bathroom, I felt a tremor and vibration that went from my feet to the top of my head. I blew it off, assuming it was caused from heavy construction work being done in the street below me. However, as I walked from the bathroom to my computer desk, I actually felt the building sway. Still ignoring it, I proceeded to leave my apartment and take the elevator down 20-something floors and then walked out onto the city streets.

THAT’S when I started to realized something was up.

The entire city was FILLED with chaos, while people quickly evacuated all the office buildings. I finally walked up to a group of ladies standing on a street corner and asked them what was going on. They all looked at me like I was insane and said, “Haven’t you heard? We just got hit by an earthquake from Virginia!!!”

Well, you never saw someone start walking so fast in your life. I decided that the safest place to be would be outside Center City limits, so I headed over to the Fairmount Park area which is AWAY from tall buildings.

Here are some photographs I took of the pedestrian congestion on Market Street, as I power walked over to Fairmount Park.

I was the only person on the street without a cell phone, but I overheard many people say they could not get a connection because certain cell phone towers were affected by the earthquake.

Notice how the kids were acting like nothing was happening. Well…all but that one kid on the left who had the same expression on his face that I had. PANIC!

I actually had to walk in the street because the sidewalks were packed with people.

Hurricane Irene

We were very blessed in Philadelphia because the hurricane only brought us some heavy rain and wind, but no power outages.

Here’s what it looked like as Irene was just getting started. I know, it looks like it was raining BUBBLES!

Like an idiot, I kept one of my windows slightly opened (which is something you should NEVER do during a hurricane), thus my apartment got rained in.

The wind was so bad I had some rain leakage through one of the upper window frames, so I had to haul out a bucket to catch the drippings.

The morning after. Notice how deserted the streets are - it was like a ghost town. The summer temperature had dropped considerably and there was still a bit of gusty wind present.