A Very British Earthquake
00h58: Just been woken up by earthquake. Pretty strong. Pretty sure it wasn’t me.
That was a tweet I sent to Twitter this morning, two minutes after being woken by the strongest earthquake to occur in the UK for almost 25 years. I’ve long wanted to experience two natural phenomena’s, a tornado and an earthquake. Last night, I managed to tick one of those off my list.
At 12h56, the earth underneath Market Rasen in Lincolnshire shifted. At the same time, 112 miles south, I was rocked awake. Two seconds into the quake, I sat bolt upright in bed and consciously experienced the earth beneath my house shaking. There was no associated noise other than something in my room rattling. The shaking weakened after 8 seconds or so, but was then followed by two strong shakes before everything came to rest once again. I remained sat up in bed for two minutes, utterly confused. Was that me? Did I dream it?
I reached over and grabbed my iPod Touch and told the world what had happened. As I sent the tweet, little did I know my sister was lying in bed in the next room, awake, and thinking the exact same thing as I was. I heard a noise come from her room. I jumped out of bed and burst out onto the landing. My sister quickly followed. There was a moments pause as we just looked at one another. I said, “Why’s it taken 4 minutes for us to talk about it!”
We switched on the tv and waited for the enevitable news reports.
01h03: News desks a bit slow off the mark. Nothing being reported apart from texts from friends. Definately not me.
Perhaps we were going mad!
01h15: Currently 01h15. Woken up by fairly strong shaking, Early reports suggesting 4.7 on ricter scale.
Then, the first reports came in.
01h17: Sky News now reporting an earthquake.
For the next hour, I went from website to website and flicked between BBC News 24 and Sky News. Sky had plenty of people on the line dying to tell everyone that they were woken up by a shaking sensation. Some of the callers likened it to a freight train going past their houses. News 24 on the other hand were locked into providing a simulcast of world news with it’s global news channel BBC World and so couldn’t give as much coverage to the quake as they probably would have liked. In fact, it wasn’t until 01h40 when a ‘breaking news’ strap was placed over a recorded bulletin from America’s ABC World News.
The earthquake, now confirmed at 5.2 magnitude, was small on global terms, but a beast in UK terms. One man was injured by falling masonery. The worst damage was to homes where chimney’s were felled. Other than that, it was a typically British affair. Millions awoke, exchanged experiences over a cup of tea and then went back to bed. For me, it was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It was a very odd feeling. Thinking about it now, I get a bit excited. I experienced an earthquake! How cool is that!?
14h05: Gonna turn back in. Sky News is starting to get a bit brainless. Good night world.
Related Links:
BBC News: ‘Costly payout’ after earthquake
