Night-quake 6.8

Last night we woke suddenly in the middle of the night to the shrieking alarms of our mobile phones trying to warn us of an impending earthquake.  That gave us about 30 seconds to jump out of bed and ask Alexa to turn on the lights as we took shelter in the few doorways in our house away from glass windows...

Our bedroom is on the second floor loft, and with the open-plan layout of the house we can see everything in what is basically a single huge room.  The house proved itself to be surprisingly flexible, swaying widely in all directions like a drunken sailor without falling.  I guess this motion added a kind of gentleness to the violence of the earthquake, because after it finally slowed down to stillness there was nothing broken, not even the one picture that flew off the wall and landed face down on the floor two meters away...

​We were very fortunate, because the earthquake was reported to be about 6.8 (on the US scale) centered just off the coast and probably around 5.5 by the time it reached us in these mountains a little inland.  Anyway, we are totally fine and the house with its utility systems all check out fine by daylight.  We are very thankful to be living in a time and place where we can almost magically be warned to seek shelter just in time, and with construction engineering that can handle such events...