Earthquake!

Yup. The first in a 100 years, 5.9 magnitude, with the epicenter about 50 miles away. Most of us had no idea at first what this was...

People panicked and buildings downtown evacuated. I don't think I've ever seen so many in the streets. And then there was complete traffic gridlock as people tried to leave all at the same time...

The pic is from a slice of my organization's command center, from where we monitor and manage crises of all kinds. I'm on the emergency communications team, so that was my 'home' for the next five hours.

Thankfully, no injury and little damage. A lot of need for letting people know what exactly they should do during an earthquake, as we all did precisely the wrong thing today. We had all possible scenarios planned in our contingency systems -- except this. No longer.