Speaking of Earthquakes

I actually felt the Easter Sunday one; it was my first real earthquake in that sense (Brooke says I've slept through a couple minor ones before). We had just come back to our little room from playing tennis. I'm bent over my desk trying to find a space to put my racquet away when Brooke says, Earthquake.
What? I say. I think I must have heard her wrongly.
Earthquake, she says again. I straighten up and at once it hits me that she's right - my desk is trembling, so is my bed, in fact the whole room, the ground itself, is rocking - for a split second I feel like I'm on a bus. We stare at each other wide-eyed - I'm irrationally thrilled - before racing out into our corridor. Everyone on the floor is standing around gripping the door frames, laughing, nervously whooping. We wait around, swaying like helpless sheep, until finally the sensation of movement under my feet gradually ebbs away and everything kind of shudders gently to a halt. For a while I don't even know that it's over.
Later everyone's joking, calling people, slapping each other on the back. Only a couple of hours later do I realize the potential danger we were in. What if it had been the Big One (the massive apocalyptic quake that's due here any time now)? For all we knew it could have been. Up here on the 9th floor, in a 50 year old building, on a hill, we'd just be standing around as the storeys beneath our feet folded upon themselves like a house of cards.
I think earthquakes are the scariest natural disasters. I feel like (and this is probably due to watching too many Twister-esque blockbusters) that with all the others there's somehow still a sliver of hope of escaping them - like, with luck and good sense, one might be able to outrun a flood or a fire. The thought of a quake, on the other hand, just makes me feel all paralyzed - as if someone boxed up the world into a little container and shook it hard. Where do you go? I'm not used to living here with that huge threat constantly over our heads. How do you attach yourself to a land, beautiful as it may be, which at any second will betray you like a cheating lover? I don't know if I can do it. Sorry to bring the mood down from your comic, Des.