'But they don't have quakes here'

It started with a low rumbling noise.

Then my desk began to sway from side to side and the furniture in my office moved up and down for what seemed like an eternity but what was probably only a few seconds.

My first thought was: this is an earthquake. My second thought was: No, this is Washington, they don't have earthquakes here. But by that time, my legs had turned to jelly. Then the rumbling and shaking began again and I feared that the ceiling would come down on my head.

I'd been in San Francisco a few years ago and experienced a slight quake, the sort of thing that local residents are used to. In those days, they said the safest place was in the bathroom, and for some reason I remembered that yesterday.

I turned to my colleague and said, "this feels like an earthquake." She said: "it might be a bomb". That made sense too: our office is on Capitol Hill, only metres from Congress and the Supreme Court. Soon the country will mark the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

I persuaded my colleague to join me in the bathroom of our second floor office. We stood there wondering what to do next. The shaking had subsided. Then we heard laughter from outside the building and started to feel stupid.

We discovered that the occupants of our five-storey building were all standing outside. But we still didn't know for sure what had happened as our phone connections were down. Finally, we got the confirmation.

The building's maintenance man said the shaking of the pipes in the basement had made him nervous. Let's face it, the buildings in Washington are not built to sustain earthquake tremors.

Minutes later, police sirens could be heard all over town. Down the street the Library of Congress was evacuated and police stationed outside while checks were carried out. Federal workers were sent home early. My local market was closed.

This being Washington, I was now a quake survivor.

Everywhere you went in the city, people wanted to tell you their story. According to Twitter, within a minute of the quake there were more than 40,000 earthquake-related tweets.