Earthquake

Let me start by saying that we are ok! Apparently, there are a lot of freaked out Brits because earthquakes just never happen here. For those of you interested in the official report from the British Geological Survey, you can visit http://www.bgs.ac.uk/news/Market_Rasen_Feb_27_2008_web.pdf.

Last night Dan got home pretty late, so I had already gone to bed. Our bed is really just a bunch of springs loosely gathered with some relatively thin fabric, so I woke up when he got into bed. We chatted a bit because I hadn't seen him all day. We had just quieted down and started to doze off when Dan turned to me and asked why I was shivering. We have some hefty blankets, so it seemed odd. I told him I wasn't shivering and I could hear the cabinet next to my bed shaking a bit. He asked if I thought it was an earthquake. I was pretty tired, so the following conversation might have occurred entirely in my head...

When our friends Brent & Celeste went to Edinburgh (only about 90 minutes North by train), they heard that the castle was built on the remnants of a volcano and the Royal Mile (big touristy street) was once a lava flow. So...there could be seismic activity in Britain.

I do recall being mildly concerned about the cabinet falling on my head. We don't have closets, just these cabinets and I imagine them to be quite heavy because they are likely made of compressed wood. It was only shaking about as much as it usually does when the washer is unbalanced, though, so I decided sleep was more important than worrying.

In any case, I checked e-mail this morning and there were concerns about our safety and we did have a couple of concerned calls. Everything is ok with us. Our neighbor noticed a new crack in her wall. When I looked up info online, it seems the epicenter was kinda far from us. We are about 3 hours on the train from London. The epicenter was about half-way between us and London, not to far from Lincoln (county seat of Lincolnshire). The quake was about 5.4 on the Ricter Scale, pretty sure the Californians out there would laugh at such a small one. But the buildings here aren't really built for earthquakes, so I imagine especially the old ones may have seen some damage. CNN reported a dude in York having his chimney collapse. York is about an hour south of us, so between us and the epicenter.

I'm a sick person and have always wanted to experience an earthquake. I know I've been in places while earthquakes occur before (Ohio and New York, I think), but I was always asleep when they happened or just didn't notice. Who knew it would be one of the experiences I could check off my list when I came here?!

I included a picture purely for your enjoyment. There are random little amusements like that hiding throughout the town here. I'll keep you posted about any new developments.

Dan's description of the earthquake (as you can see, the conversation above was totally in my head...I was tired):

It was kinda funny, actually. The shaking woke me up, and I was lying there wondering why the bed was rocking. At first, I thought Sandy was having an interesting dream... I've woken up before and watched her legs twitch as she chased cats or ducks or whatever she was dreaming about. But then the thought occurred to me that the bed was moving too much. As I began the mental process of elimination of what she might be doing on the other side of the bed, the dressers started to shake and I realized it was our apartment that was moving. The wind had reached 75mph yesterday (ah, yes... life on the North Sea...) so I thought maybe it was a particularly strong wind. Except that I didn't hear any wind howling outside. It was at this point that a) I woke Sandy up and b) that the apartment really began to shake. The whole thing lasted maybe 20 seconds. I was told by classmates that it was a 4.7 near either Manchester or Birmingham. I'd hate to see what a 7 would do to all of these old buildings. Kinda odd... I'd never really thought of the UK as being a place for seismic activity.