Tremors Part 1

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October 13, 2010

I forgot to mention the earth tremor we had last Friday, the last night of our orientation. I had a head cold and so went to bed early while everyone else went to a dinner/barbeque. It was around 7:30 or 8 and I was half asleep, alone in the room, when all of the sudden the bunk bed started to shake. It took me a couple seconds to wake up and realize what it was. It lasted maybe 10 or 12 seconds. The first half I waited out in bed and it started to ebb, but then it started to get stronger so I got up to get in the doorway. By the time I reached the doorway, however, it had stopped.

I wasn't nearly as scared as I thought I would be, I guess because I thought it would be a lot stronger than it was. Nothing really even moved or fell, just shook. I found out later that it was actually pretty strong, 5.6 on the Richter scale (at 6.0 it is deemed an earthquake), but it wasn't very strong because it was very deep in the earth, about 100 kilometers.

My Spanish/culture trainer talked about it with us today and said that the amount of damage done depends not only on how strong the tremor was, but how close to the surface it is. For example, a tremor in Costa Rica in 1991 that caused a lot of damage and killed 52 people was only 5.5 but was 15 kilometers from the surface.

These tremors/earthquakes are quite common here, so I'm sure this won't be the only experience.