Zac Carlisle

Editor

Former Mississippi University for Women student Elizabeth Locker was shocked to discover that she was living through an earthquake last Sunday.

In the early morning of Aug. 24, residents of Northern California awakened to discover that they were witnessing an earthquake. It was designated as a 6.0 magnitude quake, which was the strongest recorded one to strike California in 25 years.

The quake injured dozens of people and damaged buildings, mainly in Napa County, but cities close by also felt the tremors.

Locker, who lives and works in San Francisco, recalls waking up in the morning to see her bed shaking.

"I woke up at 3:30 a.m. thinking my cat was jumping on the bed. Then I heard what sounded like hard rain outside. That's when I realized that my bed was actually shaking, and that the sound I heard was the sound of the whole city shaking," she said.

This wasn’t the first time Locker had experienced a quake. She said that she experienced a tiny one years earlier in Alabama.

“I wasn't afraid when I realized what was going on. Besides, when you live in a fourth floor apartment, you can't really find a safer place, like a basement during a tornado or something. So you kind of have to just go back to sleep and accept that there's no point in worrying. That sounds kind of morbid, but it actually made the whole experience a lot less scary,” Locker said.

Living in California, it is basic knowledge that earthquakes will happen at some time.

“You think you know how you're going to react in a situation like this until it actually happens,” she stated.