Tornadoes? Earthquakes? What's going on?

So we were on our way to Wilbraham to take a look at the post-tornado clean up operation that was in progress on top of Wilbraham Mountain -- the clean up of what was left of the trees and the cabin (see posts for June 1 ff.), when we got a phone call from our daughter.  "Are you alright?"  What?  "Did you feel it?"  What?  "The earthquake that hit 17 minutes ago."  What earthquake?  "It's epicenter was in Virginia, but folks in buildings in Washington DC, New York City, Boston, Natick and Springfield say they felt 5 to 15 seconds of shaking!"  So for the next hour we were trying to reach family in Takoma Park, Maryland, and New York City, although all the telephone lines were tied up, as we barreled across the Massachusetts Turnpike, going west.  I guess if you're driving at 65 miles an hour, you don't feel any more tremors than the car going over the Turnpike provides. My brother was the last to call to find out if we were okay.  He recalled, laughingly, that when he was living in Southern California, they were experiencing tremors like this one every other week!

What was hard to believe was that we were driving towards the cleanup from the devastation of one natural disaster (the tornado) at the very moment that another natural disaster (the earthquake) was in progress.