It was a big shake in Seattle. At first I thought somebody was playing a joke on us because our office building (4th floor) was shaking, and I looked across the street, and everything looked normal. But the shake continued, and I began to realize something serious was happening, and bad thing happens without warning. I heard my neighbor shouting earthquake, and I was thinking whether I needed to hide beneath my desk, when bigger waves hit. Whole building was shaking violently, deskdrawers came out, computer monitors moved around. I prayed it would stop. It continued. The whole thing seemed to last 4 or 5 minutes (actually it was 30 seconds). Finally, it stopped, and I turned around, saw one of my colleague holding our cubic walls, trying to stand himself. I looked outside the window, I saw one of my coworker, already outside the building, running back and forth, really scared.
Then I realized it's time to get out of here. Trying desperately to gather my stuff (I just came into office, was checking emails when all these happened) my jacket, keys, and watch, then ran. I saw a big wave of my coworkers running toward me from the other side of the hallway, and we got out of the door together. Somebody said we should use stairs, and we headed down the stairs. More people came down from higher floors, and the stairs were full of people running down, running for their lives. People shouting, got out quickly, heaven's sake, got out.
When we got out, I saw a lot of people already standing or sitting away from the building. I saw some girls from our company sitting there together, noticeably shaken, and remained very quiet. We started talking, and my assessment at that moment was at least 6.5, this was as big as you got, man, without any serious damage, but it scared the hell out of you. Later our company offical told us is 6.2, and told us to go home and check our voice mail before coming to work tommorow. Later, update from radio says was 6.5 magnitude, and later was officially listed as 7.0 magnitude. This one was very similar to the 1949 quake in Seattle, which caused a lot of damage. The last major quake in Seattle was 6.5 in 1965. For most people like me, this was the first major earth quake experience. But it was a memorable one.