As a result of the earthquake in China I have started to take an interest in the US Geological survey website http://www.usgs.gov/ I find their constantly updated facts and figures of earthquakes fascinating. There are several earthquakes every day which measure more than 4 on the Richter scale. I suppose I can afford to take an academic interest in the subject living in the UK. Having said that I have experienced 2 earthquakes - the one in February this year and then another smaller one in the early '90s whilst I was living in Norfolk. The British Geological Survey http://www.bgs.ac.uk/ also has a section on earthquakes in this country, though it is not perhaps as informative as the American version. I think earthquakes, volcanoes, torrential rain etc all serve to remind us that the earth is alive and well and living and breathing beneath our feet.
Having said all that I'm sure the people affected in China do not think the same way and I feel desperately sorry for them. They deserve all the help they can get. How do you rebuild your life after that sort of tragedy? Was it a problem with the standard of their building that so many houses collapsed? Or was it the landslides which caused so much of the damage rather than the quake itself? Who knows - but I'm sure it will be studied for some time to come by the scientific community. Apparently geologists had only identified this particular fault line last year. I looked to see whether there had been any smaller quakes in the days before the big one, but there hadn't. There have been several since of course. I hope for the sake of the ordinary people living in the area that things settled down soon.
Work - I am on leave for the next two weeks - great! But I have a fence to treat with wood preservative provided it stays fine for more than two consecutive days. I need to catch up with the housework - things like cleaning the windows, and I want to go through my wardrobe and sling out/sell things I don't wear. I also need to do something about over 100 books I don't wish to keep and which haven't sold on either Amazon or EBay. I feel a trip round all the local charity shops coming on. We have plenty of those - about half a dozen in Boston and the same in Spalding including a Sue Ryder shop devoted wholly to second hand books - I wonder whether they want any of mine?
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2 comments:
my thoughts are also with those affected by the quake. I cannot begin to imagine their current hardships, it certainly brings things into perspective doesn't it. x
Nothing like major disasters for making those everyday whinges seem irrelevant!
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