Okay, it should have been just
"earthquake" with no exclamation point.
This morning, lying in bed around dawn, only half-awake, I heard a rumbling sound, like a heavy truck passing by. We can have many strange sounds in the night, like loud horns, drummers, and wild animals, but we don't have early Sunday morning trucks outside our door. So early in the ten-second experience, I thought it was an earthquake, and sure enough, the rumble was followed by some shaking and then silence. (I think that it even quieted the birds for a brief period.) C later reported that she heard the heavy wooden chair scrape against our tile floor. As it was, I didn't know C was awake, and while I was prepared to deal with an earthquake, I was not prepared to awaken her before Nature undertook the task for me.
This is the second tremor that we've experienced. Both occasions were easily detected. Interesting but not alarming. Seeing all of the construction going on around us--and it's quite a lot--I know that the poured concrete buildings have enough rebar to hold up almost anything. (Steel girder construction here is very rare.) In addition, since almost all scaffolding consists of bamboo poles, I doubt that even temporary scaffolding would ever be seriously threatened. So far (knock on wood), the tremors are just a novelty. To have experienced a couple of tremors within less than one-half a year as opposed to the once-in-a-generation quakes that one experiences in Iowa adds some spice to our experience.
BTW, the weather right now compares to that in Iowa in May. We're sleeping with the windows open (wood and noxious smokes notwithstanding), and the daytime high will hit about 80 F. Sweet!
This morning, lying in bed around dawn, only half-awake, I heard a rumbling sound, like a heavy truck passing by. We can have many strange sounds in the night, like loud horns, drummers, and wild animals, but we don't have early Sunday morning trucks outside our door. So early in the ten-second experience, I thought it was an earthquake, and sure enough, the rumble was followed by some shaking and then silence. (I think that it even quieted the birds for a brief period.) C later reported that she heard the heavy wooden chair scrape against our tile floor. As it was, I didn't know C was awake, and while I was prepared to deal with an earthquake, I was not prepared to awaken her before Nature undertook the task for me.
This is the second tremor that we've experienced. Both occasions were easily detected. Interesting but not alarming. Seeing all of the construction going on around us--and it's quite a lot--I know that the poured concrete buildings have enough rebar to hold up almost anything. (Steel girder construction here is very rare.) In addition, since almost all scaffolding consists of bamboo poles, I doubt that even temporary scaffolding would ever be seriously threatened. So far (knock on wood), the tremors are just a novelty. To have experienced a couple of tremors within less than one-half a year as opposed to the once-in-a-generation quakes that one experiences in Iowa adds some spice to our experience.
BTW, the weather right now compares to that in Iowa in May. We're sleeping with the windows open (wood and noxious smokes notwithstanding), and the daytime high will hit about 80 F. Sweet!
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