Earthquakes

Earthquakes are not fun! We had a medium sized one in Jakarta yesterday. Away to the south was closer to the epicentre and the damage there seems to have been greater. There has been some loss of life.

Kristina says she didn't even feel it - she must have been sozzled from another of her long lunches! I was on the 35th floor of a steel framed skyscraper and I certainly felt it. First there was a bit of a wobble - then it kept on going - and eventually we started to sway. There were no thumps.

I would have guessed the earthquake lasted 45 seconds, but the papers say a minute. The building then swayed for maybe two or three minutes - enough for me to feel a little motion sickness.

The quake itself was also long enough for me to decide to get under a door frame - and try to tell colleagues to do the same. Most of them seemed to prefer running around in circles - or bolting for the stair wells. My partner jumped in a lift!

Afterwards I was asked whether I was not scared? I said I was in fact terrified - which is why I was standing quietly in a doorway on the 35th floor and not getting trampled in a stair well, stuck in a lift or struck on the head by falling glass outside a tall building.

When we got home to our 5th floor apartment we found cracks in the laundry wall - see photo.

I remember quakes from my New Zealand childhood. I always find them scary and can't help wondering - just how big is this going to be?

My home town Blenheim - and Wellington (where I went to University) are overdue for a 'big one'. Last time there was a really 'big one' in 1855, the location of Wellington airport went from a tidal swamp to dry land.

An 1848 quake lifted big parts of the Wairau Valley - including the farm I grew up on. With melting Greenland ice sheets, we could probably do with another couple of metres rise - but I shouldn't joke about things like this.

Addendum - It seems I got things back to front in the last paragraph. It seems the Wairau plain fell (not lifted) in 1848 - and as a result the Opawa River became navigatable as far up as where Blenheim now is. Apparently that earthquake also created the Vernon Lagoon.