I’ve only been in one earthquake. It was disappointing. Only days after the Los Angeles earthquake of 1994 Janice and I were in Vilcabamba Ecuador. It had been a little surreal watching the destruction played on the news on a TV set in Cuenca Ecuador, and staying in a little cabin on the mountains overlooking Vilcabamba was rejuvenating. I spent the days birding and hiking, or lazing on the hammock on the porch.
Vilcabamba is famous for the longevity of people who live there and a hallucinogenic cactus called the San Pedro cactus (explaining both the old people and the aging vacant hippies in town). Our cabin was small and a little apart from the other cabins, the beds were on opposite sides of the cabin, separated in part by the entrance. About two nights into our stay there something woke me in the middle of the night. I laid a short while awake and then the cabin started shaking. My first thought was "Good god Janice is tossing alot, she’s shaking the cabin" but then I realized that she couldn’t. But something was shaking the cabin. As I laid there wondering what it was, I thought it was probably a burro that hung around there. Then I heard something fall into a pit (for some future renovation) next to the cabin as the shaking stopped. I went back to sleep thinking that what ever was shaking the cabin would be in the pit and I could see what it was.
I always awoke early on the trip and as soon as I did I went out to the pit to have a look. Nothing. No burro, no tracks, nothing. Well that’s not entirely true, I later realized that what I heard was part of the wall of the pit collapsing into it. Then I tried shaking the cabin. It was solid. Really solid. I know I’m not as strong as a burro, but there was no way one would have budged the cabin either. About at that point, while I was scratching my head Janice came out and informed me that my tossing in my sleep had wakened her because I was shaking the cabin. So, it wasn’t a dream.
Going down to the lodge for breakfast I noticed that there was a magnitude 5.0 earthquake in Guayaquil that morning. It was far enough away that we couldn’t have felt it, plus the times didn’t match, the Guayaquil earthquake happening hours later. Then other guests began arriving asking if we felt the earthquake last night. Earthquake? I had no idea. You see it was disappointing because, to me, the earth wasn’t moving the cabin was. All in all it ended up being my second best story from that cabin.
All of this is a long way of going about with the news that there was an earthquake in Resolute Bay yesterday around 4:20 pm, magnitude 4.0. The earthquake was actually centred south of Resolute at the North end of Somerset Island, but it was felt in Resolute. That’s close, Resolute is only a couple of hundred kilometres away. Maybe one of these days I’ll feel the earth move.
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We had an earthquake here years ago Clare, we were in bed one night and heard it coming, next thing the house started shaking and creaking. No damage, but quite an experience.
I’ve heard that parts of northern Canada are more prone to earthquakes than most people think. I don’t know all the science behind the way the plates (or cracks in the plates) shift around in the north but I’m sure people think I’m telling tales when I mention quakes can happen up here.
Reading your post gave me a flashback to the only quake I’ve been in down in Windsor, Ontario. It wasn’t much of a shake. It was a 5-point-something but centred down in Ohio many km underground so it only lasted 2 seconds. Still, a pretty awesome show of nature’s power.
I’ve been in several earthquakes including the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. When you are in bed, the bed absorbs so much of the motion that it’s hard to tell what it is. Hopefully when you do feel one, it will be a small enough one that you can enjoy it! 🙂 The small ones are fun! Big ones, not so much.
I realize that saying that I was disappointed by the earthquake sounds like I’m making light of what can be a very serious natural phenomena with huge potential for loss of life and damage. I had several friends who experienced earthquakes later in life, (I imagine that it is different if you grew up on a fault line) who described the experience as very unsettling. Unsettling in that the earth isn’t supposed to move and when it does it shakes some core feelings about the solidity of our planet. I’d like to experience another quake, not one where buildings collapse and people get hurt, but something on the line of the Vilcabamba experience. I’d just like to know it was an earthquake when it was happening. Thanks Duncan, Darcy and Liza.