Well, maybe not the last one. Last night when I was getting up to brush my teeth before bed, I opened the door and heard what sounded like a suitcase being dropped down a flight of stairs. I kept walking until I felt a bit of a rattling in the floor, which made me think even more that someone had just dropped a heavy object. I stopped to see where the sound was coming from exactly, and then I felt a horizontal jolt - maybe just an inch or two - that made my knees briefly buckle underneath me. The rattling floor and shaking wall-mounted items lasted another 5-10 seconds or so, and then there was nothing.
The only earthquake I ever experienced was in San Francisco in 2006. I was there for a meeting, and it was my first time in California. I was going to bed, just about to fall asleep, when I heard a little bit of shaking along the walls and saw the hanging lamp sway ever so slightly. When I woke up, I put on the news, and there was a magnitude 3.0 earthquake felt throughout the area the night before, so I realized that, on my first night in California, I was lucky enough to experience an earthquake.
This one was better. GeoNet confirmed that it was an aftershock of the big one that hit here last month, and its magnitude was listed as a 4.6, probably about 700 times as powerful as the one that I felt in San Francisco. The big quake that I keep referring to occurred on September 4th and was a magnitude 7.1, which is somewhere in the range of 1,300 times as powerful as the one I felt last night. Hence the damage throughout the city.
Have one more day completely to ourselves before tomorrow's outfitting of cold weather gear. Then the following day (Monday for us, Sunday for you) is our flight to Antarctica, barring no weather problems. Will update at least once more from Christchurch!
Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment