I Survived The Earthquake!!!

This week I was busily working away in my little cubby hole office, not really paying much attention. I have 2 co-workers who sit directly beside my office. Mid-afternoon, out of the blue, one says to the other, "Did you feel that?" The other replies, "Yes!" They turn to me and ask, "Did you feel that?" I says, "Uh ... errr ... no ... feel what?" The building just moved!

According to the US Geological Survey website, an earthquake of magnitude 6.1 struck southern Iran at 2:30pm (local time) Wednesday afternoon and then at 3:03pm, another occurred of magnitude 4.7. Iran is just a stone's throw across the pond and some of the aftershocks measuring 4.8 were felt in the UAE, mostly in the northern Emirates.

I work on the third floor of Emirates Tower which is on Sheikh Zayed Road. We were not forced to evacuate and in fact there was no indication that anything out of the ordinary was happening other than a crowd of people outside our building and across SZR. I can't say as I experienced the sheer panic that others reported in the news (I didn't even feel it). There were no deaths in Dubai, no noticable damage, barely any coverage in the news and immediately following the conversation with my work-mates, I turned back to my computer and continued on with my day.

OK, so it was a bit of a non-event, but it does make for an interesting blog post!

The Gulf News
Zawya.com

As an aside, Jumeirah Emirates Towers are the pair of triangular, pointy buildings that you see in a lot of the Dubai sky-line pictures. The taller one on the left is the office building, the one on the right is a hotel.


This photo and an interesting comentary about the towers at Galinsky.com