At 1:51, on August 23, 2011, I was sleeping in my bed. Suddenly, I was wide awake with the shaking of my bed. I looked around to see if my brother was doing it, but he was not. He was actually in the kitchen doing his homework. I called for my mom and she also did not know what in the world was going on. We were standing in the middle of the apartment, terrified from the shaking. I had never experienced an earthquake in my whole life. I thought there was a truck passing by. But what kind of truck could make the whole apartment building shake so hard? So, the earthquake lasted about 15-17 seconds. We were just so horrified from the earthquake that we went outside for a little while. I saw many of my neighbors waiting there. Some were even in their cars! We talked about what had happened, there were little kids who were so scared that they would only stay with their moms and dads. So, eventually we went upstairs again. My mom turned on our local news channel, and they showed a lot of videos and told about the earthquake. It was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake. In my opinion it is not too much, but it is of medium strength. Luckily, there were no damages to buildings or trees, or even people in Brooklyn.

The earthquake started in Virginia. I was told that the buildings shook really hard over there. There was not much damage, so that is a very positive thing. From Virginia, the earthquake past many cities and states like Washington DC and it made its way here to NYC. We felt tremors of the earthquake which was enough because even that was a lot. Did you know that a magnitude of 5.5 can be felt as far as 300 miles away? I did not know that until I actually researched what was going on!

In all of my 13 years, I have never experienced something so scary like this earthquake. I have never even imagined that on a hot summer day, we would get an earthquake, like literally in the middle of the day. I guess this is why they say, “Expect the unexpected.”