I was on a remote assignment inside the Capitol when the earthquake struck. Nice feeling being inside a 200-year-old building when there is moderate ground shaking !

There are a few lessons that I learned from this experience (my first quake):

1) I need to create a non-bladed, backup PSK. I left my PSK behind because Capitol Police are very leary of blades. Luckily, I didn't need it, but I sure felt vulnerable without it.

2) Don't count on cell phones. Service went down almost immediately, either due to volume or interruptions. I am on Verizon, and had visible bars, but could not get through to others with different services. Texts were spotty as well.

3) A burner bike at work is a good idea. Traffic, usually heavy mid-afternoons, was snarled. It looked like 9/11 all over again. Tunnels and bridges were closed, and train travel was overcrowded and crawling along on suspect tracks.

4) We were very fortunate. Had the shaking lasted longer than the fifteen seconds I experienced, things could have been much worse. The older buildings seemed to have held up well, though.

I hope everyone in the area is okay.

Mark