Friday, April 18th, 2008
Earthquakes in Illinois? WTF?!! This morning....at 4:37 am...I slept through the worst thing mother nature has thrown at Springfield, Il.....in...ummm two years? Did the founders of this city build it on top of an Indian Burial ground? Tornadoes, ice storms, and now an earth quake? Should I expect a hurricane this summer? I hope so.....my resume tape is gonna be pretty sweet by the time I leave here.

I slept through the earthquake....which means I def didn't wake up at 4:45am when my producer called. But by 5:30 they had finally reached me. The phone call kinda went like this:

Me roll out of Bed...*ring ring

Me: Hello?
Producer: Ben you need to get dressed and come in.
Me: (in a confused kinda where the hell am I tone) wait....wha? huh? Whats going on?
Producer: There has been an earthquake and we need you to come in.
Me: (fully alert) AN EARTHQUAKE?!!!!!!!!!!

As I drove to work I 1) asked how the hell did I sleep through an earth quake? 2) Wondered what the damage would be.

As I passed through downtown...I pictured this:

But it just looked like a sleepy town. No crumbled buildings....no screaming babies....no flames shooting out of newly formed cracks in the soil.

By the time I arrived to work I already knew it was a 5.2 on the richter (named after my favNY Ranger Goalie)
And no damage to report from authorities. But we did have some call in reports. First stop...northeast side of Springfield for SOME SERIOUS DAMAGE....mail boxes had....duh duh duh......fallen off their posts. I showed up and sure enough two mail boxes were on the ground. So I took my camera and filmed the death and destruction. Later it was found out.....the mail boxes had actually been knocked over by a car the previous night. Needless to say Charlie Gibson in New York was not happy to hear we could not show the footage. Off to my next stop.....some legit damage.

A guys dry wall of his roof had collapsed from the shaking. While the image was not as captivating as say this:
It still turned into a fun story of how a dad and his two kids woke up to the shaking this morning. By the time I was able to head back to the station we sat in the morning meeting.

As we were all sitting there speaking of how many different ways a earthquake event could be told...the floors began to shake. My chair started vibrating and everyone just looked at each other like "whoah.....cool". The after shock hit right after 10am (4.6 on the scale I believe) and I had been vindicated from reporting on an Earth quake I had managed to sleep through.

By the time 6:00 reached around and it was time for my story to air....some funny things happened. Katie...a fellow reporter...and I both headed out to do a live shot from the same spot. A kind of TV trick that fools no one.....Katie stands in one spot...does her story...we turn the camera in a different direction for my story and TA-DA.....it looks like I'm in a new location. By show time....it started to rain.....really hard. Me being 6'2 decided to hold an umbrella above Katie's head during her shot (and out of frame) to keep her out of the rain. When she was done...I dropped the umbrella.....and had 15 seconds to get ready for my story and BAM.....result...I looked like a soaked mess while Katie looked awesome.

By the time my day was done it was a 12 and a half hour day of shaky goodness. Glad I got to feel the quake....even if it was the sissy second round. And Dave caught on to some of my witiness by supering (thing that pops up telling you their name) a dude with the tag "Awake for Quake".

Earthquakes in Illinois......who knew?

Want to learn more about today's Earth quake? This link tells it all with some cool maps:ILLINOIS QUAKE OF 08 You can even tell your story which can be used for future research!

Hope those in Springfield got to experience what turned out to be some good safe shaking that was most likely better than your 8th grade semi formal!