tl;dr: There was an earthquake a series of earthquakes and aftershocks in Osh! I’m fine, no damage.

So, you probably heard about the massive 7.5 earthquake a few weeks ago in Afghanistan that also triggered some building evacuations here in Osh. What you almost definitely DIDN’T hear about is the 5.9 earthquake that hit Osh (literally, Osh was the nearest city) late Tuesday night, the 4.8 magnitude aftershock ten minutes later, the 4.1 aftershock three hours later, or the 4.9 magnitude aftershock three days later (which ironically happened during an earthquake preparedness training for volunteers).

Now, despite me growing up literally on an earthquake fault line, in two states that have had some of the worst earthquakes in America, I’ve never actually felt an earthquake before..I always slept through them, probably because there never was any stronger than a 3.5, and our houses were built very strong.

Well, this one woke me up. It was about 11:30 at night, and I woke up because I heard rattling and felt the house shaking. I live on the second floor of my house, and earthquake-proofing is not something that’s done here, so the movement really transfers. My counterpart lives on the 4th floor of an apartment building and she said they thought it was going down. Anyway, the shaking just kept on going. And going. It must have lasted for 20 or 30 seconds, or at least it seemed like it. I was lucky that only a few plastic things fell off of my shelf or fell over, but another volunteer’s entire spice rack smashed across her room.

Now, if that sounds big, you’re right; people usually don’t notice earthquakes that are less than 3 or 4 in magnitude; they’re short and don’t shake much. But one of the definitions of a >5 earthquake is that it’s felt by everyone. That’s because the “magnitude scale” (apparently, the Richter scale hasn’t been used since 1970?) is a logarithmic scale, so an increase of 1 point in magnitude equates to an earthquake having 10 times the shaking amplitude (and releasing 30 times the energy). For reference, the 2001 Seattle Nisqually earthquake, which cracked buildings and traumatized a generation of children, was a 6.8. Last year’s 6.0 earthquake in the Bay Area was the strongest quake in that area in 25 years. So, in that perspective this was a pretty big quake.

There’s been some concern about the fact that Central Asia does run into a good number of earthquakes, and that all got really real on Tuesday. But, thankfully, we’ve all had earthquake preparedness training, and the Peace Corps has detailed emergency contingency plans that we are all trained in to ensure our safety during and following these kinds of natural disasters. So, while there might be another earthquake, we are all prepared and know exactly what we need to do.