The closest I have been to experiencing an earthquake was when Seattle had that one a couple of years ago. I was in a conference call from the UK to Seattle when the quake started.

One of the guys at the other end, said "What was that ?". Then we heard was sounded like someone shaking the desk the phone was on.

Then one of guys in Seattle said "I think its an earthquake".

At this point we laughed and started winding them up, because we thought they were joking. Shortly after that we heard someone say "Are we supposed to get under the desk or something ?" then the line went dead.

We still thought they were having a joke with us. When we found we couldn't call them back or get through to anyone else in the Seattle offices we realised it was real.

It took us more than an hour before we managed to raise them again, by which time we were convinced they were all dead and we were feeling very guilty