The Washington, D.C., region and much of the rest of the East Coast rumbled a couple of days ago when a rare 5.8-magnitude earthquake hit near Richmond, Va. The Earth’s moving crust left its mark on one of the capital city’s most famous landmarks, the Washington Monument.

The National Park Service released these photos of the cracks today:

You can see more photos of the earthquake’s damage to the monument at the NPS Facebook page — a testament to today’s social-networking times because the photos aren’t even available on the agency’s website yet.

I was working in Washington when the earthquake hit, and like thousands of other earthquake amateurs in the city and elsewhere, I ran out of the building and into the street. According to the experts, we made the wrong choice:

If you’re indoors during an earthquake, drop, cover and hold on. Get under a desk, table or bench. Hold on to one of the legs and cover your eyes. If there’s no table or desk nearby, sit down against an interior wall. An interior wall is less likely to collapse than a wall on the outside shell of the building. Pick a safe place where things will not fall on you, away from windows, bookcases, or tall, heavy furniture. It is dangerous to run outside when an earthquake happens because bricks, roofing, and other materials may fall from buildings during and immediately following earthquakes, injuring persons near the buildings.

We’ve had a few aftershocks the past couple of days, one of them at 4.5 on the Richter Scale last night, but I’ve slept right through those. Hopefully if I’m awake the next time one hits, at least I’ll know better what I’m supposed to do.