The Day Joburg Shook!

So I am at work. We are all sitting at our desks, working (or something like that) and the building starts to shake.

Living in South Africa, we do not get earthquakes as such and I can count the number of tremors I have felt on one hand.

This was different. We are in a solid concrete building on the first floor and it was MOVING.

Initially we all just looked at each other in disbelief. Then we realised it was a tremor, a big tremor! Furniture started to rock. Files fell out of the cupboard and the printer wheeled a little from side to side. People called from their offices ‘Can you guys feel that?’

Then some people started to walk around and smile and socialise… SERIOUSLY! I was this close to hiding under the damn desk! Pictures flicked by wildly in my head of things I should do if the roof collapsed. Not my life flashing before my eyes per se, but how to survive an earthquake!

So I just sat there dumbfounded frantically thinking. After about a minute the tremors finally stopped.

Now I felt fine! On to Twitter I went to see who else had felt it. People had started tweeting already and I spent the next hour or so reading tweets with news posts, people’s experiences and then very funny jokes.

South African’s as a whole have a very good sense of humour and we tend to band together in a crisis.

This was no different and the #tremor tweets ranged from informative to hilarious!

So far they have pinned down the epicentre and one person has perished. It was a 5.3 quake!

Will it happen again? It seems too early to tell but I hope not!