Well, we experienced our very first earthquake last night! It happened after we had already gone to bed around 11:00 pm, and we had just finished watching the #1 LSU Tigers beat the #2 Alabama Crimson Tide in overtime, when suddenly we heard and felt something strange and unusual. At first we thought it was the wind blowing really hard outside, but then we realized it wasn't the wind. Fletcher jumped out of the bed and said, "What is that? I think it might be an earthquake! Listen!" The strange sound we had heard was the bedknobs shaking on our four-poster bed, and what we had felt was the bed shaking! It lasted for at least an entire minute which was long enough for us to realize something was happening, turn down the sound on the TV, and for Fletcher to jump out of the bed in alarm! It was the most awesome thing I've ever experienced! We weren't really afraid, just mostly surprised! Fletcher did a quick walk through the house to be sure everthing was okay.
Another funny thing about this was that when this happened, the channel we were watching on TV was reporting an earlier earthquake in Oklahoma yesterday which had happened in the early morning hours when suddenly this earthquake hit while they were reporting the earlier earthquake live on TV! What timing! Ha! The first caller that called in to the television station to describe what happened said, "I had just returned home from attending the University of Arkansas Homecoming football game, in which The Arkansas Razorbacks had beaten the South Carolina Gamecocks, and I was sitting down reading a bow hunting magazine, when I felt my chair begin to shake!" Ha ha! I thought that was funny and a typical story from Northwest Arkansas!
Today Fletcher walked around the outside of the house to look for any damage. He found a couple of cracks in the bricks, and a couple of loosened bricks at the corners of the house, under windows, and just under the roof line. Well, you just never know what might happen around here.
This earthquake was centered in Oklahoma, northeast of Oklahoma City, around the area of Prague, Oklahoma and Sparks, Oklahoma and registered a magnitude of 5.6 on the richter scale. It was also felt as far away as north Texas, where my sister, Rhonda, and her husband, John, felt it at the same time in Frisco, TX as we did here in Bentonville, AR. Since the 11:00pm earthquake, at least one aftershock has been felt that I know of in our area. It was reported to be around 1:30 am this morning.
We are so thankful that this earthquake was very minor and we have little or no damage to report at our house.
