There are a lot of experiences I can recall after my sixth year volunteering with Travelers Aid, but one of the most memorable is the infamous Virginia earthquake of August 23, 2011. Since we're approaching the fourth anniversary of this memorable day, I thought it would be enlightening to touch on the experiences I had that day while volunteering at Washington Dulles International Airport.
As a then 17-year-old high school senior looking ahead to college applications, being responsible for hundreds of travelers' safety was the last thing on my mind on a muggy Northern Virginia August afternoon. I was working my usual Tuesday afternoon Travelers Aid shift at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, VA with my grandfather, also a long-time volunteer.
About halfway through the shift, a young woman asked if I could help her call Southwest Airlines to assist her in re-booking a flight and to see what later flights there were to Denver, CO. After thumbing through our massive guide to all things relating to Dulles Airport, (referred to as the "Bible") I finally found the reservation number and began dialing when I felt my rickety chair begin to shake.
When you spend enough time in airports, you realize small little shakes of the floor are fairly common, mostly due to the noise of 747's taking off and landing all around us. This shaking was much different. After a dozen seconds, the shaking intensified and soon the whole building, the ground below us, and the overhead signs were all violently shaking back and forth.
As an airport employee, you are always living in a post-9/11 world, with security and safety always being at the front of your mind. With my shift in Terminal B, we are required to pass through the employee security check point and are subject to the same security rules as traveling passengers.
My reaction to the endless shaking was that either a bomb had gone off in the B terminal or a plane had crashed into the building. I thought one of my biggest fears of a terrorist threat when working in an airport was transpiring right in front of me. Once the shaking had stopped, I realized that it was "only" an earthquake.
After catching my breath and scanning the long B terminal hallways, I tried to assess the situation, though we knew very little at the time of what had just happened. I was quickly hashing through my mind what our next move would be. Would we be evacuated? Is an overhead sign about to come crashing down that broke during the earthquake?
While still thinking about security, I had assumed that if something like this happened in an airport or another major public place, there would be widespread panic and fear. I could not have been more wrong. This was the opposite at Dulles, as to my surprise, travelers were not running and screaming and went about their day like almost nothing had happened. People were wondering what happened, but it was not a doomsday scenario like I envisioned. However, the overhead directional signs were still swaying 10 minutes after the shaking had stopped.
Shortly after experiencing the quake, travelers began approaching our small podium with questions: "Is the airport safe?" "Was that an earthquake?" "Should we be evacuating the airport?" Unfortunately, I could not answer any these questions since we were still in the dark about what had happened, waiting on an official announcement from airport management on the public address system as to what we should do next. We instructed everyone around us to remain calm and that we would be evacuated if airport management saw it necessary.
An announcement was finally made over the airport's public address system announcing that the region had just experienced a magnitude-5.8 earthquake centered in Mineral, VA and the airport was confirmed to be safe. Flights would continue to operate, but would be delayed the rest of the afternoon. The rest of our shift was filled with both laughs and shock as travelers and other airport employees were still in awe of what happened.