This time, an earthquake got my attention.

Abu Dhabi rocked and rolled, a bit, at what was estimated as something between a 4- and a 5-magnitude shaking from another Iran-based earthquake — described as the biggest to strike Iran in 50 years — a 7.8 on the Richter scale.

It was felt from Abu Dhabi in the south to Delhi in the northeast, and even at a distance of about 375 miles from the UAE capital it was unmistakable.

Especially about 10 floors up in a tower.

I was trying to take a nap, actually, when the first wave hit. I may have been asleep, because it didn’t seem all that strong, a sort of twitching of the room which brought me around, and I would not have with certainty been able to say that was an earthquake — as opposed to some odd dream.

I resolved to return to sleep, but was not quite there when the second bit of shaking occurred, about 10 seconds of it, at 2:48 p.m., according to my watch, and the building swayed a bit. I knew exactly what it was, of course, being a boy from SoCal.

You never come to enjoy earthquakes, but you have a sense of what damage it has done as you feel the rocking stopped, and nothing was crashing to the floor — or to the ground.

Apparently, at the offices of The National, every phone began to ring as local people, most of them with no history of riding out an earthquake — aside from the feeble event of last week — called to ask what was going on.

It seems some bit of panic broke out, here or there. People stampeding into streets, and such, often without getting far enough away from buildings to be safe from falling debris — or falling buildings.

Clearly, educating people here to how to react to an earthquake has made little headway and, we must concede, they are unlikely to be hit by anything this strong any time soon.

I went to the balcony and watched people down below, in the street, and more than a few came outside, but most of them went directly for the shade (it was in the high 90s) — which put them next to or beneath the buildings they had just left. May as well have stayed inside.

As before, the rocking here led me to think “that was something serious somewhere else, probably in Iran” … and it was. No deaths were reported in Iran because the epicenter was in the desert, but 30-some were killed in Pakistan, to the east.

A 7.8 is a significant event, even by California standards. And the ripples felt in the UAE — a 4-5 magnitude — may be about as intense as a quake will ever be felt here.

This one got my attention.