Today's Earthquake - A not-so-Random Rambling

This was not my first earthquake. Or my second. I've had quite a few in my lifetime and most of them are barely worth mentioning beyond asking people in earshot, "Did you feel that?" or checking Facebook for all of the statuses.

When this one started at 5:31 pm, I assumed it would be like the others. I was working and muttered distractedly to myself, "Wait are we having a volcano?" before my mind supplied the right word to me. Earthquake. That's what it was. I stayed in my chair waiting for it to stop but it intensified instead. The furniture around me shook visibly, even the walls seemed to be moving. I relocated to a safer spot, checked that my phone was nearby and waited some more. It went on for about a minute and a half.

I wasn't scared in the moment. I was focused on remaining calm because fear makes you do stupid, stupid things that you can regret for a lifetime (if you live). About an hour after all the tremors had stopped, the fear just descended on me. All sorts of nightmarish scenarios began to play out in my head. What if the roof had collapsed? What if I'd been trapped? What if the whole country had descended into chaos?

But that's not what happened.

I've heard that the magnitude was somewhere around 7.3. I'm still not quite sure. The epicenter of the quake was in Venezuela (I truly feel sorry for them having to experience this in addition to their current economic crisis). For anyone who's uncertain about the geography here, Trinidad is almost swimming distance from Venezuela but the tremors were felt in some of the islands further north as well, like Grenada.

I haven't heard reports of any fatalities and I hope not to over the next few days. Goods and property were damaged. Some people's cars were destroyed by falling debris but they were parked and empty at the time. Many, many people were scared. But we're alive. I'm very grateful to be alive (but also nervous about aftershocks).