We had a very scary experience this morning. At about 4:30 am, Missy woke up in a panic and said "Get up there's a tornado"!!! The house was shaking like crazy and (thinking it was a tornado) it seemed like the roof was about to come off any second. So we ran into the kids' rooms and grabbed them out of bed and ran downstairs to hide in the closet under the stairs. I had Jack's hand and pulled him down the stairs and Missy ran into the girls' room to get both of them out of bed. She shouted "Just throw that stuff out of that closet", so I started pulling stuff out and throwing it across the room. By the time I had cleared it out enough for all 5 of us to get in, the shaking stopped and it then it was completely silent. Eventually we realized there was no wind, no rain, and no thunder or lightning! So I went outside and it was a silent, peaceful, calm (and dark) morning. It finally hit me that we had just been through an EARTHQUAKE!!! Missy and all the kids were crying, so it was definitely a very scary event. I looked down and Abby and she said, "I hold Daddy" so I picked her up and she was trembling like crazy.
When the news finally came on a 5:00 am, they started off right away with a breaking news story that there was a 5.4 earthquake near Mt Carmel, IL. Apparently that ties the record for the strongest earthquake on that fault line. They said it wasn't on the New Madrid fault, but another one I hadn't heard of. They were very flustered because it happened right before they were getting ready to go on the air. At first she (I think it was Angie Richards) said it lasted 10 minutes and I was shocked (and disappointed) at how long it took us to wake up, get the kids, and get downstairs. But eventually she corrected herself and said it lasted 10-20 seconds. We felt much better after that, because we had all the kids downstairs before the shaking stopped! Pretty good for 2 tired parents with 3 kids at 4:30 in the morning!
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