Or it sure felt like one, here on the eighth floor of our building in downtown Long Beach.

If the epicenter was here … it’s pretty serious. If the epicenter were some distance away … there could be serious trouble wherever that was.

It occurred at 11:42 a.m. (PDT), by my watch, and seemed to come in two waves.

This ain’t my first rodeo, in terms of earthquakes. I’ve lived in SoCal all my life.

When I felt the first tremors, I announced, “earthquake.” You just know, after a while.

It got stronger and stronger. It was more of a rolling thing than the sharp “jolts” you hear about.

The building was swaying more than a little, and it seemed to me that it was an east-west sway, not a north-south. For what that’s worth.

During this first set of tremors, a glass-covered picture frame tumbled off the mantle and shattered. There is glass everywhere in that room.

However, all the other non-secured cabinets and shelves stayed up — perhaps because I was propping up the china cabinet.

There was a bit of a pause in the swaying — maybe 3-4 seconds — and then a second wave came on. It was at least as strong as the first, and also had the same east-west rocking feel to it.

It felt like a very long event, but I’m sure it wasn’t. Maybe 10 seconds, the pause, and then another eight seconds? Something like that. We’ll get the news reports later on, and we’ll see how strong it was.

Just saw the first news report. A 5.8 quake centered in Chino Hills, which is about 30 miles from where I’m sitting.

We don’t get floods. We don’t get hurricanes or tornadoes. But, yeah, we get earthquakes. And we all know we’re overdue for what SoCal commonly refer to as “The Big One.”

Of the quakes I’ve been through … this ranks fairly well. The Sylmar Quake of 1971, a 6.6 magnitude on the Richter Scale, was a deadly thing, and the Northridge Quake (6.7) of 1994 killed people. In 1992, I was living in Highland and keenly felt the Landers (7.3 magnitude) and Big Bear (6.4) quakes, which followed each other by about an hour. In those cases, I was about 30 miles from Landers, and only about 10 from the Big Bear.

This seemed to be as strong as those two. Maybe because I’m eight stories up? Maybe because I’m older and more easily alarmed?

And about this building: It survived the 1933 Long Beach quake, which was a 6.3 magnitude and killed 115 people. Back then, many of the buildings were built of bricks, which don’t hold up in quakes.

This building is one 11-story mass of concrete, and it’s going to require a couple more upticks on the Richter Scale to bring it down.

I do wonder, though, if by being eight stories up we felt more swaying, as the old building rocked back and forth.

Can’t assume it’s over. These things almost always have aftershocks. Expect one in the next two hours or so.

Anyway, that woke me up.