BY MIKE CETERA
The Associated Press is calling it "one of the strongest ever recorded" earthquakes in the state. Centered in the far southeastern part of the state, the 4:37 a.m. temblor shook buildings hundreds of miles away.
The quake shook skyscrapers in Chicago's Loop, 230 miles north of the epicenter, and in downtown Indianapolis, about 160 miles northeast of the epicenter.
Did you feel the quake? Share your story.
I was up at about 4:30. A few minutes later, there was a few shakes and although not a strange occurrence here (we have railroad tracks a few hundred feet from the house) there was no train.
All the windows were opened and all of a sudden there was this eerie silence outside and the house just started shaking. You could hear joints everywhere creaking because it was SO quiet and not for just a few seconds. It lasted 20-30 seconds which is a long time in pitch black, in the middle of the night! The shaking woke my wife up and she simply got up to go to the bathroom and was freaked when I told her "we just had an earthquake!".
We turned on the news, (TMZ was all that was on at 4:40am) and so we just went back to bed. Took a while to go back to sleep though.
Then later we heard it was a 5.4 centered downstate somewhere.
Don't want to be in anything stronger thank you.
I fell asleep early last night, so I was up eairler than usual. I was awake, but still laying in bed when it happened and I had my window cracked open. I heard a rumbling noise, and the windows shook a little bit, but since our area is expecting rain, I figured it was thunder. But then it kept going and I felt my bed shake a litle bit (it's never shook from thunder before, no matter how loud and hard it was). And then it stopped, and was just as quiet as it was before.
I was awake and reading and felt my bed shaking. Thought it might be my cat using my bed as a scratching post but she was next to me. Also, it shook for awhile and seemed to be almost like it was vibrating. Thought to myself "could this be an earthquake, I'll check when I get up" and kept thinking, no, it couldn't be. Kept wondering whether I felt this kind of shaking before. Thought that it couldn't be an earthquake. And went back to sleep. But the news confirmed my thoughts... Strange.
The earthquake awakened me from a sound sleep. There was a large creaking sound in my house and perfume bottles were rattling on the dresser. I turned on the lights and looked outside, thinking we had a thunder storm. Since earthquakes are so rare in this area, I then assumed a very large truck was moving through town (Dundee).
Perhaps you geniuses could tell us your hometown? Geez!
Like 'deb', I also thought my cat was using the bed as a scratch post, but he was not there. My other cat was on the bed and did not react. I thought maybe a big truck had rumbled down the street.
This is a true story in which my husband can confer. 3 days ago I dreamt that I was living in a 2 story house in Illinois, but not the one I am living in right now (Oswego, IL) and I was with my sisters and a friend and all of our kids. I ran to gather all the kids to have them come in the house because there was going to be an earthquake which happened and I felt it in my dream, the kids all went back outside to see what had happened and I called them all back in again telling everyone that there would be another one, but my daughter who is 6 would not come in until I went outside to get her. I woke up that next morning and I told my husband about my dream and I specifically asked him why earthquakes happen and asked him to look it up online to see what fault line we sit on in Illinois. He read to me why earthquakes happen after he had already told me what he knew about earthquakes and then he read that S. Illinois sits on the Madrid fault line. Well I was blown away this morning when I turned on the news and heard about an earthquake that happened in S. Illinois. I immediately called my sister who lives in Cape Giarardeau, MI to see if she had felt the earthquake and she stated that she felt her bed shaking with her young daughter in her bed. I called my husband at the Aurora Fire Station to let him know what had happened in relation to my dream and he was in shock as well, because of the vivid dream that I had described to him and all that he had looked up and read to me. I think I would have been in more shock had I felt that earthquake.
Submitted by Gloria Torres, Oswego Resident
Gloria, you should become a psychic. Also why would you make your kids come inside for an earthquake? It is much safer to be outside.
West Salem, Illinois? The place is a dump. Much like a tornado hitting a trailer park, the only thing an earthquake could do there is improve the place.
Oh, and Gloria...are you mixing your meds again, sweetheart?
For those concerned about safety issues during an earthquake - see the following link to the Red Cross' Earthquake Safety Web page
http://www.redcross.org/services/disaster/0,1082,0_583_,00.html