Barks worse than the bite - Earthquake in England

Tim

Tim

Creative Writer
just before 0100hrs in the morning and I'm nodding off to sleep, in that period before full unconsciousness.

Suddenly my bed is being shaken violently, my cupboards are all waving about, squeeking and banging on the walls, things falling off the tops of them.

Apparently it was a 4.7 and the epicentre about 30-40 miles south east of me.

My birds were stressed out, flapping away in their cage. I know how they feel, it's an hour later and the stress of being woken like that almost gave me a nose bleed! I've only just stopped trembling myself. At firwst I honestly thought someone had broken in and was shaking my bed to attract my attention, that's how immediate the experience was!
 
Yikes! We're I'm at in the States we get quakes but usually so mild that most people don't even know that one is taking place.

Is your region a traditional quake zone or did it come as a surprise?
 
well, everyone gets earthquakes, but we aren't on a common faultline. Every 10 to 25 years we get hit by something like this apparently. But mini tremors occur quite a lot, we understand this from watching national geographic type programs.

They've revised the strength to 5.3 this morning. That's most definitely not a little tremor!

I suppose it panicked people more than anything. We had one guy with an injured leg after his chimney collapsed and fell on him, one fire the fire brigade was called out to, although 50 more incidents that were unspecified (across the whole country.)

It only lasted for 10 seconds which added to the confusion. At 0056hrs most people were asleep and woke to 'wonky' vision and noise that wasn't understood coming up from sleep. This of course has led to a rise in witty comments about friends pregnant wives having fallen out of bed, etc, etc.
 
There were earthquakes in Illinois a decade ago and scientists discovered a very long hidden fault line. I felt the rolling tremors in the middle of the day, it was as if something big was moving underground, like a giant creature or vehicle, a very strange feeling.
 
My house is approximately 2 km from a fault line (I know this because I can see a sismographer coming out of the ground).

Everytime there's a tremor my wife jumps out of bed to run outside whereas I normally just sit up to watch the room shake a bit and then go back to sleep.
 
Back
Top